Sold! In the Show Me State

by Jessie Gussman

  The crowd laughed. She had her back to Chandler, but she could imagine him giving one of his perfect, white, flashing smiles. Maybe even saluting as he turned to follow her.

  Or maybe he wouldn’t follow. Maybe he’d get to the door and stop. He wasn’t exactly known as someone who followed through. The one time she’d been paired with him in biology on a project, she’d ended up doing everything herself. The teacher had never known it though, because Chandler was such a ham he played everyone. And she’d never said anything, just wanting to get it done so she didn’t have to be around him. She hadn’t wanted to work with the jerk in the first place.

  Because as nice as he was to everyone else, he’d never been nice to her. She assumed she wasn’t worth his effort.

  She pushed the door open.

  The inside of the rec hall had been busy and bright and loud and warm. The parking lot was completely deserted and dark with only one pole light shining not far from the edge of the building.

  Disoriented from going from the brightly lit and busy interior to the dark and still parking lot, Ivory stood for a moment, trying to remember where she parked. Her evening hadn’t exactly gone the way she planned. She definitely hadn’t arrived thinking she would take a man—Chandler—home with her.

  It hadn’t occurred to her since the moment the man put the money in her hand, but maybe she didn’t want to take Chandler home. She had tried as hard as she could her whole life to not be what her mother was, morally, and now here she was. Although she had signed a statement to keep it from going there, that might not mean anything to Chandler.

  He wouldn’t be interested in her. He’d been clear about that her whole life.

  Those thoughts didn’t give her the peace she’d been hoping for.

  She breathed in the deep night air, trying to steady herself, hoping she hadn’t just made the stupidest mistake of her life. She supposed she could send him home, but that would look like failure on her part, and she didn’t need anything else to drag down her standing in the town. If she couldn’t get along with the golden boy for thirty days, she’d probably never live it down.

  The door snapped behind her, and a shaft of light broke through the darkness. Heavy footsteps. Then the door closed.

  She supposed it seemed like she was standing there waiting for him, and maybe on some level, she was. But she wasn’t going to turn around and look at him. She was certain it was him, because she could smell him. Not a bad way. But the same scent that she’d caught when she walked by him to the table to pay for him reached her again, only this time it was more pure, undiluted by the pumpkin and apple and other spices and the potpourri of the townspeople’s scents.

  If she liked the man, she would love the scent. But she didn’t want to admit that the scent which reminded her of strength with a smile belonged to the man she hated.

  Hated was a strong word. But she felt it applied in this instance.

  “My truck’s this way.” She stepped off the stoop and started walking to the right. She was pretty sure she’d parked this way. Her eyes swept the parking lot, back and forth. It was full, but her truck wasn’t hard to miss. There were other farm trucks there, but hers was the only one that had wooden fenders and a flatbed with wood sides. The truck bed had completely rusted off, and Boris, her neighbor to the south, who was even more eccentric than she was and eighty years old if he was a day, had fixed it for her. Not exactly fixed it, but put a wooden body on it so she could continue to run it.

  Still, she didn’t see it. Her determined steps slowed, and she racked her brain, trying to remember where she’d been when the man had stopped her immediately after she’d gotten out of her truck with his hand on her shoulder and given her the five thousand.

  Which direction had she gone then?

  And then she remembered she’d come from the completely opposite direction.

  Now what? Did she admit she’d made a mistake, turn around, and go back the other way? Did she try to laugh this off?

  If she were home by herself, or if Boris were there, or a couple of the ladies that she knew from town who had always been nice to her, she would laugh it off. That was her natural inclination.

  But with Chandler behind her? She didn’t want to admit a mistake. She didn’t want to show weakness.

  So she didn’t. She increased her strides, until she was almost doing a power walk, and swung her arms loosely at her sides. She could own this. She’d pretend she was taking a walk before she got into her truck. One that took her the entire way around the building.

  She might not fool him, but he wasn’t the only one with acting abilities. He might wonder, but he’d never be able to tell for sure whether she were making it up, or whether she really wanted to walk.

  Chapter 4

  The confounded woman had taken him the entire way around the building.

  And she’d done it at a speed that almost required him to jog, despite her short legs.

  Chandler knew all about jogging and going to the gym, lifting weights and staying in shape, but he certainly didn’t power walk to his car in the parking lot. He was used to a slow amble. It annoyed him that she was off to the races. Apparently taking the long way.

  There were no cars around the other side of the building, and it was pitch black back there. Chandler stumbled once and bit off a curse at the crazy woman. If he broke his leg, it would serve her right—although he wasn’t even sure why she had bought him or what she’d want to do with him. Maybe it wouldn’t require the use of his leg.

  When they finally made it around the end and came to the other side of the parking lot, they only passed about three cars before she hit the hood of a pickup.

  “This is my truck. You can ride in the front if you have to, but the back is where I prefer.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but her words made his brows twitch. In the back? She preferred he ride in the back? It only took a glance to see that there really wasn’t much “back” to it.

  It didn’t take much thinking on his part. He put his foot on the fender well and swung his other leg over the edge, plopping down with his back to the cab of the truck.

  If she wanted him to ride in the back, he would.

  He’d never been hard to get along with.

  He thought maybe her mouth was hanging open a little, and he suspected he shocked her. He smiled a little to himself.

  He had no idea why this woman had bought him. He didn’t even know her name. They’d gone to school together, and it was a small school. He remembered her from there.

  Everyone knew her. Her mother was the town prostitute; it was a running joke. He wasn’t sure if the rumors were true, but everyone always said her father was the town drunk.

  If anyone ever said her name, he didn’t remember it.

  He sighed to himself as the truck motor started and the bed under him began to rumble and vibrate. Hopefully she was a good driver. Because he couldn’t exactly put a seatbelt on where he was.

  He needn’t have bothered worrying. She drove slower than his mother.

  It would have been nice to be able to talk to his mother before he had to follow the woman out of the building. He’d like to know what she thought of this situation. She’d quit bidding.

  Or better yet, what his mother thought of this woman. Surely she wasn’t the kind that would shoot him in the forehead.

  Twenty minutes out of town, she turned off on a dirt road he’d never used. If he’d had to guess, he would have said he expected her place to be some apartment or duplex located in the lower end of town. He hadn’t expected her to live out in the country.

  Maybe there was a shantytown here of sorts.

  That far out, there were no streetlights, no lights at all except for the glow from the headlights and the moon when it wasn’t obscured by the spotty clouds in the sky. Thankfully it wasn’t cold out, although he was trying hard not to shiver by the time the pickup stopped.

  A ramshackle old building was all he saw in the dim light.
Something that definitely needed to be torn down and replaced.

  The door creaked, and the woman appeared. “This is where you’ll sleep. There’s a foam mattress on a ledge along the wall, the bathroom’s on the far end, although there’s no hot water, and there’s a small kitchen sink.”

  When she’d spoken, he’d stretched up and looked around. This was the only building he saw in the moon’s faint glow. He could see fields and fence and what looked like a shed for goats and maybe a cow. No house.

  “Where’s your house?” The words came out kind of abruptly, because he didn’t want to be dumped off in the middle of nowhere. He hadn’t thought to bother bringing a weapon.

  He grabbed his duffel bag and stood, walking to the edge of the bed of the truck but not getting off. He put his free hand on his hip and glared down at her. This had to be some kind of a joke. And he wasn’t thinking it was funny.

  His question seemed to stop her, and he wondered about her mental capacities. Surely his family would not have allowed him to drive off into the night with a crazy person. One of them would’ve grabbed him and stopped it...right?

  “This is my house. I wasn’t expecting to bring you back tonight, so I’m giving it to you for the night. We’ll fix something up for you tomorrow.”

  Three sentences. But it was like she had just read a book to him. She hadn’t been expecting to bring him home?

  This was her house? She really lived in this run-down shack?

  But if this were truly hers, and she had no other house, she’d just given the best she had to someone that she, so far at this point in their relationship, didn’t even seem to like and hadn’t been expecting.

  She’d given directions like she wasn’t following him in.

  “Where are you staying?”

  Her fingers had burrowed in the material of her sweatshirt, or whatever piece of clothing she was wearing, and her eyes dropped, staring at his feet. “I think it’s safer for me to not tell you. I don’t know you, and I definitely don’t trust you, and I don’t expect you to trust me.”

  She slammed the door of her pickup shut and walked off toward what he thought was a small shed for what sounded like goats and cows. Either she was checking her animals, or she was going to sleep with them. Maybe both.

  Whatever he’d been expecting when Lynette had talked him into putting himself on the auction block, it hadn’t been this.

  She still wore a beanie hat, but her white blond hair stuck out from underneath it, reflecting the light from the moon and almost glowing in the darkness. Well, he wasn’t sure exactly why she bought him, but at least she didn’t seem to have any romantic interest in him. That would make his life easier for the next thirty days.

  Touching the rail with one hand, he kicked both feet over and landed beside the truck. Grabbing his duffel, he walked to the shed that was apparently her house.

  His hand was on the door latch when he remembered he didn’t know her name.

  “Hey!” he called, walking around the corner of the house to where he could still see the disappearing form of the woman. “Hey!” he said again when she didn’t turn at his first call.

  Her stride slowed, although she didn’t stop, but he knew she’d heard him.

  “What’s your name?” he called, determined that she would at least give him that much. He wasn’t sure if he was staying. He thought it might be wise not to. But he at least wanted to know with whom he was staying or leaving.

  She took at least three more steps; he wasn’t sure she was going to answer him. Then her voice rang out over the night air. “Ivory.”

  Then he remembered. Their town wasn’t that big, and he’d known her name at one time.

  She kept walking, disappearing into the night without another word.

  Maybe he’d offended her feminine vanity. Any other woman he knew would be upset he didn’t remember her name.

  She wasn’t what he thought she was going to be. Maybe she was just tired.

  Come to think of it, so was he. He’d worry about it in the morning.

  He supposed good manners dictated he thank her for giving him her name, but he didn’t. He ducked back around the corner of the building and walked in the doorway.

  He felt for a light switch, but couldn’t find one and finally pulled his phone out of his pocket, turning the flashlight app on.

  She’d said there was no hot water; maybe there were no lights either.

  But after shining the light along the wall and then checking behind the door, he found the switch. One light bulb in the middle of the ceiling came on, casting a harsh glow over the small room.

  A tiny table with two chairs, a sink, a little bit of counter space, a stove that looked like it was the first one to come off the assembly line after electricity had been invented, the bench Ivory had mentioned along the wall with a foam mattress on it, neatly made. He supposed one of the two doors along the far wall was a bathroom. The other one, he wasn’t sure. He strode over and opened it. It held a refrigerator and freezer.

  Wow.

  He wasn’t sure he’d ever been in a rougher, less furnished place. The floor was wood and so were the walls. If she had a place to keep her clothes, he couldn’t figure out where it was. There were no dressers or hangers or anything of that nature. No loft. Just two windows.

  The foreboding that tightened the back of his neck and grabbed his stomach came back in full force.

  What had he gotten himself into?

  If this was her house, and she was letting him have it tonight because she wasn’t ready for him, where in the world was she gonna be having him sleep tomorrow night?

  But then he thought of the woman herself. He assumed she was a woman, although she was thin like a young girl. Skinny. At least that was what it looked like with the baggy clothes that hung on her figure.

  He wasn’t going to solve all those problems tonight, and he wasn’t going to worry about it. His job was to get through the next thirty days, pay his debt to society and his hometown by helping the tornado victims, and scoot back to Hollywood.

  Yeah, he might have trouble with losing himself, or finding himself, whatever. But at least he had a house there. Not some dump like this. He looked around. She must wash her clothes in the creek. There was no washing machine.

  He shook his head. This was nuts. He should have paid one of his brothers to buy him. Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier, instead of leaving it to chance?

  Maybe he could get it straightened out in the morning. Maybe he could pay this girl to let him off the hook or pay someone to take his place.

  Even as he thought that though, his hackles kind of raised. Deacon had stuck his neck out for him, and the whole town was watching to see if he was still the same person that he used to be—quitting when things got hard.

  He didn’t want to be that person anymore.

  Chapter 5

  Ivory had the animals fed and watered, the stalls cleaned out, and everything put out to pasture, in the only pasture that had a working fence, well before full daylight the next morning. She hadn’t slept well. When the first gray light of dawn crept over the eastern sky, she’d been up.

  It’d been tempting to go over and beat Chandler out of bed, just to be mean—she hadn’t realized how deeply her mean streak went—but she wasn’t sure she wanted to go there. Still, she couldn’t avoid her house forever. She had to eat.

  Putting the six eggs she’d gotten so far out of the henhouse in her sweatshirt that she’d slept in, she walked over to the house. She wasn’t going to knock on the door; the house was hers, after all. But she didn’t want to be completely rude.

  So she knocked.

  Two raps, and then, “I’m coming in.”

  She didn’t have to ask permission. She could just announce herself. That was well within the rules and bounds of politeness since she owned the house.

  It had to be almost eight o’clock, and she wasn’t sure what exactly she expected, but Chandler was still in bed and, from the
sound of the snoring, still asleep.

  Now what? She wasn’t sure exactly what to do. It wasn’t like he was a regular hired hand where she was paying him for a certain amount of time.

  Technically she had “bought” him, but there were no parameters to specify exactly what that meant.

  She’d had all these grand ideas yesterday evening of all the things that they could do, things that had needed to be done for a long time, but maybe she’d just better not depend on him.

  That was his reputation anyway. Of all the Hudson boys, Chandler was the goof-off, the player, the one that never followed through on anything and always took the easy way out. That’s why he was in Hollywood instead of working on his own farm.

  The idea of having a little help to run the place was nice, even for just thirty days, but it obviously wasn’t going to pan out.

  She put the eggs on the counter, grabbing a bowl and getting some butter out of the fridge.

  Chandler snored the whole time she cooked them and ate them with toast and honey.

  She put a roast from the freezer in the crockpot for a late supper, pared potatoes and set them on the back of the stove, ready to cook when she came in tired this evening, and thought about changing her clothes.

  She wanted to. There might not be a whole lot of visitors to the farm, but she did try to keep clean at any rate. The problem was her clothes were under the shelf that Chandler lay on, and she wasn’t going to wake him to get them.

  The very least he could do, if he wanted to stay, was find a place for himself to sleep that wasn’t in her house. Deciding to leave a note to that effect, she got a piece of paper out and was writing on the table when the snoring stopped and the man rolled over.

  Big bare feet stuck out one end of the blanket, and big bare shoulders stuck out of the other end. She wasn’t going to admire either. After all, the big sot was lying on her clothes, and he hadn’t lifted a finger to help her so far this morning.

  But her eyes didn’t get the memo, not right away, and they kind of hooked on the shoulders. Not that she’d seen too many, but they did look nice. She noted the stubble on the chin, the triangle nose. Picture-perfect, everyone in Hollywood loved them. She might as well admire them while they were in her kitchen. The man they were attached to wouldn’t be staying long.