by Eva Sloan
She did not register it when the agents sent Jeff away, or when they searched through her room, checked the air conditioning vents, and pawed through her private bathroom. She also hadn’t realized when they’d left her sitting on her bed in her room. She sat there with her tear-wet cheek pressed against her knee, alone.
~*~
Across town, high above the city in a building still being built, Delia waited for him. Standing at the edge of the scaffolding she peered out into the night. Nothing separated her from the winds that whipped through her long blonde hair. She did not turn as he approached, yet he was certain she knew he was there.
Gabriel strode toward her, breathing heavily from the climb—the service elevator incapacitated when the construction crew vacated for the night. He ignored the sinking feeling that threatened to plummet him to his death, and moved up behind her. He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her against him.
“Why always so high, Delia?” he said breathily. “Are you trying to kill me?”
He could tell she was smiling. “Testing you, maybe…or maybe I’m testing your love.”
He gave a little bark of laughter. “How much more must you test that? By now you should know how much I want you.” He turned her around and gazed into her cool blue eyes. Her arms were bare, her flesh cold to his touch. He hadn’t gotten used to that enough to ignore it. But someday he hoped he would.
She purposely closed her eyes. “Want and love are not the same thing.”
Gabriel’s hands moved up and caressed her face, and then gently pulled her to him. When their lips made contact a cool thrill sparked through his entire body. She gasped as she fell forward, against his broad chest. Even through the shirt he wore he could feel the chill of her touch. He kissed her long and true. There was no other woman on earth he desired, only her.
Delia pushed away from him and held a hand to her lips, the other outstretched to keep him at arm’s length. “As I said, want and love are different.”
Gabriel took hold of her wrist and pressed her hand against his chest, right where his heart pounded with strong, hard beats. “I love you...you know that!”
Her eyes glinted coldly as she appraised him with her gaze. “But we’re stuck.”
“Don’t start that again. I love you. I’ve proven that time and time again. I defy my own family to be with you.”
Delia hissed. “They know nothing of us being together. How is that defiance? It’s cowardice!”
Gabriel still had her hand held to his heart. “Does this heart beat the song of a coward?”
Her eyes bored cold and brutal into him. “But your heart can’t tell your family about me. Only you can tell them how much you love me.” She glared at him, not blinking. “That you choose me.”
Gabriel groaned and shook his head. “And what would happen if I did? What would happen if either of our families found out about us?” He gently took hold of her chin and drew her face up until her eyes met his. “If they had even a clue, there would be war, and you know it.”
“We could make them see!” Her eyes flashed haughtily. “Change their minds.”
“Our families? Changing their minds after all this time? The word impossible comes to mind.”
“You won’t even consider it?” She pushed away from him. “Even if it was the only way we could be together?”
“I think about us being together every day.” He pulled her to him again, buried his face in the cool, smooth flesh of her neck and inhaled her intoxicating scent. “And I want nothing more than to tell my parents about us.” He sighed, conflict storming inside him. “Being in love should be a happy thing, something to celebrate. Not something to hide at all costs.”
“If we were brave we would tell them, force them to accept us.”
“Because that worked so well for Romeo and Juliet.”
Delia’s laughter was bitter as it rattled in her chest. She pushed away from him again and rolled her eyes. “I would have to fall for a freaking bookworm.”
Gabriel held out his hands beseechingly.
“I am a warrior,” Delia said flatly. “In six centuries I have neither run from a battle, nor hidden who I was. I am vampire. The strongest warrior of my people, and they would listen to me.”
“But would your father?” he said.
Delia’s expression faltered as Gabriel continued.
“He’s King, not you. Would he listen to another word you said if you told him I was your man?”
For a brief moment Gabriel thought he had gotten through to her. But then her back straightened and the steely resolve returned to her features. “He would listen to me. I would make him listen.”
“He’d kill me,” Gabriel groused. “Then he would probably execute you. Mingling of the species is against vampire sovereign law. Not even he could change that edict.”
“Coward!” she spat, her expression menacing.
“If there was a way,” Gabriel said, “you know I would do anything to be with you.”
Delia’s eyes snapped open wide and then sparkled as a smile flashed across her face.
“What?” He asked cautiously.
Her gaze flitted away from him, darting here and there as she seemed to be chasing a tantalizing thought. She raised her hand; fingers outstretched, and then clasped shut as if she’d seized a thought out of thin air. “I have an idea.”
Gabriel stared at her for a few beats. “And would you like to share this idea?”
Delia’s gaze darted back to him, brimming with excitement. “No…not yet.” She turned and strode away from him, looking back at him over her shoulder as she came to the edge of the scaffolding. “But soon…”
She stepped off the ledge and disappeared out of sight. Gabriel groaned and gritted his teeth and looked up in exasperation. He hated when she did that. He was certain she would land on her feet, unscathed, but he hated when she willfully tossed herself from such heights.
“Show off!”
Chapter 2
THE ALARM bleated a call that could easily wake the dead. Lucy rolled over and squinted at the clock. She’d managed to sleep through twenty minutes of its racket, yet didn’t feel a bit rested. What she did feel was sore and old. She pulled herself up in bed and turned the evil alarm clock off instead of punching it, hard—the damned thing had cost her twenty-three ninety-five, plus tax. She looked around at what had been her bedroom for the last six months and once again felt poor.
Sore and old and poor...life was good.
It was a room in her Gram’s house, actually the room her mother had grown up in. It had one little window, which she had forgotten to draw the curtains on, so now the afternoon sun was making the generic white walls glow like halogen floodlights. Her private bathroom had been bigger than this room.
She kicked off the covers and stumbled over a pair of black Dr. Scholl’s sneakers, and then walked gingerly on her always aching feet to The Smallest Closet in the World!
Of course, she was reminded, as she opened its door to the half-dozen mix-and-match Wal-Mart sales rack outfits that comprised her entire wardrobe, that she really didn’t need the space.
When the FBI and the IRS had returned to Lucy’s family’s house three days after they’d taken her father into custody, it hadn’t been to tell them why they’d taken him—though they’d found out at the arraignment that he was charged with money laundering, tax evasion, extortion and, on a horrifying side note, immigrant slave labor trafficking.
No, they came for the house, the cars (including her red Mustang) and then went room by room and took anything of value. In her case she lost absolutely everything. Every piece of jewelry, cell phone, and every item of clothing and pair of shoes—even her damn socks had been designer label. She got off with the tank-top/sweatpants ensemble she’d been wearing only because she was trying to work off some of her worry on the treadmill in the home gym.
They also froze all of her father’s assets, so all her mother left with was three hundred dollars in ca
sh, no mode of transportation, and a suitcase of clothes that were deemed to have no value.
On the other hand, Lucy’s brother Seth left the house with almost everything he owned, including some of his video games.
She stood out on the sidewalk in front of their five-hundred-thousand-dollar Spanish villa style house with her mother and brother, waiting for the taxicab an agent had taken pity on them and called.
Her mother, Lila, had had two choices as she’d stood there waiting for the taxi. They could have probably afforded to stay in a flea bag hotel overnight, and then they’d be flat broke in the morning. Or, they could take a cab to the bus station and buy three tickets to her grandmother’s place in Four Corners—a tiny town about an hour east of their home in San Bernardino.
Standing in her bedroom in Four Corners, California, she took in the blue and yellow uniform that hung in her closet (replete with a tacky sun visor emblazoned with The Golden Arches) and was reminded again that she worked at McDonalds.
Her father had rolled over on his law partners, to secure a ten-year prison sentence served in a minimum-security facility. But that deal hadn’t included Uncle Sam returning any of her father’s assets to the family, so her mother was now a cocktail waitress in nearby Barstow, and Lucy had to take the bus just to get to work every day.
That alone had been an all too humbling experience, and the only thing she clung to now was the hope that one day she’d be able to buy herself a used piece-of-shit car. That way she could drive herself to McDonalds for the next ten to twenty years.
Dreams of marrying a multimillionaire or going to a good college had gone up in smoke months ago when she’d first taken the bus to work, had missed her stop, then had scrubbed a public toilet as her initiation into the fast food service industry. She had felt that her life had gone down that toilet the instant she’d flushed it.
And now, as she pulled her uniform on (amazingly Gram always seemed to be able to get the grease stains, and most importantly, the smell of McDonalds out of her uniform), her heart sank and shrank in her chest.
Today was her eighteenth birthday.
Happy Birthday!!!
As she pulled her still long, yet not nearly radiant, hair back in a tight ponytail, she considered for the hundredth time just calling off. But truthfully she had nothing else to do, and no one to do it with. She had no friends to go out with. She’d gone from teen queen to a complete nobody in her new high school—the new girl with a mean chip on her shoulder and discount clothes on her back. Her mother was working her usual Saturday night shift, and her grandmother was busy at a church bake sale. So calling off would mean being completely alone on her birthday.
And anyway, she had already seen the ugly truth: her life was pretty much over, and working on her birthday was just one more thing she’d have to get used to.
She trudged downstairs and poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot her grandmother had made fresh before she’d gone out. She was tempted to just drink it black. There would be no more apropos symbolic gesture for the turn her life had taken. But the mere thought of coffee without cream and sugar made her want to gag. So she made her coffee just as she always did—some milk and three sugars—and stood leaning against the worn metal and Formica kitchen counter, taking in the tattered yet spotless old kitchen, and the lonely silence of the house. Even her loser brother had friends in Four Corners, and he was staying the night with one of them as she sipped her coffee.
Another thing she’d lost that he hadn’t.
~*~
The bus ride from San Bernardino to Four Corners had only been the first of many trips she had taken on a bus. Though all buses looked alike, they certainly didn’t smell alike. Some smelled of feet and body odor. Some smelled of industrial strength air freshener (the driver’s halfhearted attempt at masking the stench. But that usually just made the bus smell like lilac scented gym socks).
But there was one driver—her name was Shirley—who actually kept her bus spotless, and Lucy always took a seat close to the front on the days she’d catch her bus.
Shirley talked to anyone and everyone, her curiosity seemingly boundless. The best part for Lucy, though, was that Shirley would just let you sit there in silence as she happily drove and chatted up others. Yet somehow she made you feel as if you were in on the conversation.
Today Lucy caught Shirley’s bus and she happily took her usual seat, fading into the scenery as Shirley told a rather old man with a wrinkled radish for a nose that her petunias were shriveling on the vine. “It’s just not natural,” she continued, pushing a large frizzy strand of her red hair out of her eyes. “I water them three times a week. I even have one of those Miracle Grow attachment doohickeys.”
Mr. Radish Nose scratched his ginormous red nose and then asked, “Are they in direct sunlight?”
“Well, of course they are!” Shirley smiled. “I read the packet the seeds came in.”
“Well, that’s true for out east. But for the climate out here the sun’s just too harsh. And though pretty and hearty, those things fare better in the shade in these parts.”
Shirley made a little humph noise, and then straightened her shoulders. “Makes sense.” She smiled into her rearview mirror at Mr. Radish Nose. “I’m off in two days, so I’ll go ahead and transplant them to the other side of the house. There’s a good shady spot right beneath my kitchen window.”
Mr. Radish Nose nodded his head in agreement.
Lucy smiled and caught Shirley’s bright green eyes looking at her. “Gotta work on your birthday, huh?”
Lucy’s jaw dropped and she shook her head. “How did you...?”
Shirley smiled knowingly as she smoothed her dark red hair back again into the little flip she’d styled it into. “When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you can just tell. And the look on your face invariably means it’s your birthday, and you have to work.”
“You’re amazing. You should be on TV.”
Shirley gave a honking laugh. “I’d sure as blazes be better at it than that god awful Dr Phil.” She shook her shoulders with a chill. Lucy knew what would come next. “And that Oprah’s gotta know there’s a studio apartment waiting for her in hell for exposing the world to that lunatic.”
Shirley hated Dr. Phil with every ounce of her rather substantial, curvy body.
She pulled the bus over and said, “This is your stop, birthday girl.” And sure enough, as Lucy got out of her seat, waved goodbye to Shirley and then half tripped down the three little steps of the bus, there she stood under the Golden Arches.
She sighed. “Now my birthday is complete.”
~*~
McDonalds was bombarded with customers, and not the usual Saturday night crowd. This was pure chaos and mayhem, and at first Lucy was glad for it. The busier it was, the faster the time would fly by. But her assignment tonight (the grill) had her stuck over a hundred patties of scorched meat, and her hands and arms got burnt by the overly sizzling grease.
When it’s really busy, management will turn up the heat on the grill—to hell with corporate’s rules and regulations for the cooking of their prized beef patties. Management just wanted the burgers done and out the door with the customer.
End of story.
About an hour into this hot, smelly mess of special meat, she was coated with sweat and grease, and she had all sorts of tiny red welts all over her arms.
“Lucy!” Greg, her night shift manager yelled, though he was standing right beside her.
She looked up at him unenthusiastically—she no longer jumped in surprise at his all-too-often sudden outbursts. “Yeah, Greg?”
Greg was on the cusp of turning thirty, his hair was starting to recede, and he always looked like he was constipated. “Go to the cooler and get two containers of the Special Sauce...” He plucked the spatula from her hand. “I’ll watch the grill.”
“Okay.” She turned and started to walk away when Greg hollered again.
“Grab a bag of sandwich l
ettuce too.”
She nodded her head and waved that she’d heard him, but she didn’t bother to look back at him. She stayed close to the wall as she navigated further back into the bowels of the fast food restaurant. Twenty-three workers ran around like computer animated chickens with their heads chopped off, with no rhyme or reason, and just barely missed running right into each other.
She yanked open the cooler door, almost getting bowled over by an acne pocked kid named Gibson, and then slipped into the cool, clammy embrace of the walk-in cooler. If it wasn’t for the smell—an overtaxed refrigeration unit, fresh and rotting vegetables and fruits, the grease that coated every square inch of the store, and of course the mildew of refrigeration moistened cardboard boxes—she would enjoy the temperature dip.
Plus the unit itself made a white noise that blocked out all other noises. So it was kind of peaceful.
She stood there for a lovely moment and let the cold envelope her—and forgot that she was this Lucy now, and let a flash of her old life, the old radiant and amazing Lucy, warm her. She tried not to take a breath. This lasted for exactly ten seconds, and then she had to take one. That alone snapped her back to reality, and she started to move toward the shelves she needed to pull stock from.
First the bag of leaf lettuce. In most McDonald’s stores even the lettuce is pre-shredded and the tomatoes pre-sliced. All so everything about the burgers you buy are exactly like the burgers you get in any other McDonalds, anywhere you go.
Gram had said it’s called the Socialization of America. That it’s a real thing, and that’s why it’s taught in almost every college in the land. But since she wasn’t going to college...or anywhere else...she’d decided not to give the lettuce and tomatoes at McDonalds much thought.