Mustang Sassy

by Daire St. Denis

  It was then that she noticed the man standing beside Jordan who was anxiously avoiding her eyes. “Carlos?”

  “Sass, what are you doing here?” Jordan asked slowly as he regarded Buck sitting beside her.

  “What am I doing here? What are you doing here?” Sass pointed at Carlos. “What is he doing here?”

  “Yes,” Stewart Carlyle glared, “this is a private meeting, Jordan.”

  “This is Carlos. He’s the one responsible for the Mustang repairs.”

  “From Hogan’s?”

  “Yes.” Jordan said the word but it sounded like a question as he glanced again at Buck. Sass turned to look at her father and then back at Jordan. But he refused to look at her.

  “Good Lord, son, what are you talking about? I don’t need the mechanic, I’m buying the whole place.”

  “What?”

  Jordan looked shocked but not nearly as shocked as Sass felt. She stared open-mouthed at Stewart Carlyle. Then her gaze slipped back to Jordan and from there to the two blond giants seated across from her—his brothers. How could she have missed the resemblance? Same blond hair. Same build. Same blue eyes. She jumped to her feet and cried out, “You’re a Carlyle?”

  Jordan frowned. “Sass. I was going to tell you—”

  “You liar!” Sass stalked around the table to where Jordan stood. In her mind’s eye, she had a tire iron in her hands and Jordan was a ’67 Mustang. She could almost see herself swinging the iron at his knees to take him out. How she wanted to swing it again and make Jordan hurt as much as she did right at that moment. Instead, she simply glared at him with as much hatred as she could muster. “You tricked me into fixing your car, you lied to me, and you used me.”

  “No, I—”

  Sass shook her head in fury. “If I hadn’t done the damage myself, I’d almost think you were there on purpose.” Sass stopped her rant to consider. Then her eyes widened as realization sank in. “Were you in Greenview to spy on Hogan’s? Is that what this was about? Did you sleep with me hoping for some kind of insider information so that you could rob me and my father out of our life’s work?”

  “Wait a second, Sass.” Jordan stared at her strangely. “Back up. You smashed the Mustang?”

  “Of course I did. I thought it was his.” Sass pointed to Carlos.

  For the first time since entering the room, Carlos spoke. “You tried to smash up my car? Why would you do that?”

  “Why do you think?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Sass? What’s going on?” Buck broke in.

  But Sass had eyes and ears for only one person. Jordan. She stalked right up to him and gave him a shove. “How could you?”

  Jordan blinked at her. “It’s not what you think.”

  “Explain it to me. What were you doing in Greenview?”

  “I was—” Jordan glanced frantically around at the other people in the room. It was all the answer Sass needed.

  “You weren’t just passing through, were you Jordan Michaels?”

  He reached around behind his neck. “No.”

  “You used me.”

  “No.”

  “You seduced me.”

  “No!”

  “You made me think that you…you made me feel that we…” God! Her voice kept cracking and her head was pounding so hard, Sass thought she might pass out. It didn’t help that everyone was all talking at once now.

  “Sass,” Jordan said, holding his hands out in supplication. “I thought you knew. Please, let me explain. Let’s clear this up.”

  Before Jordan could take another step toward her, she moved, giving action to her pent-up emotions. She threw a hard uppercut under his chin. Jordan’s face went through a range of expressions from disbelief to pain to confusion as he fell against the wall behind him. The last thing Sass heard before she stormed toward the exit was a low whistle from one of Jordan’s brothers who then laughed and said, “Holy shit! Don’t tangle with that one.”

  Once at the door, Sass turned. With hands on her hips, she said, “You know what? Carlos didn’t even do the repairs on the Fastback. I did. Check the signature panel. An H with three snakes, actually, it’s three S’s. It’s my brand.”

  Sass tilted her head at the men in the room, and just like her mother had on that night of the poker game so many years ago, she said, cool as anything, “You may not know this, but I’m the deal breaker in this transaction between Hogan’s and Carlyle’s, and what you’ve done with your lying and cheating is ensured that your family will never own Hogan’s. After the way you’ve treated me, there is no way in hell I’d ever work for a Carlyle. Ever.”

  With a sense of poise she didn’t know she possessed, Sass walked out of the meeting room, through the showroom and out to the parking lot to her beloved, but soon to be sold, ’Vette. She barely noticed the rain as she unlocked the door and got in. It wasn’t until she started the engine, pulled out of the lot, and turned on the radio that Sass felt anything at all. Her radio was tuned to Denver’s classic rock station and AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” was playing. It was then that Sass got a serious case of the shakes.

  …

  It took a moment for Jordan to find his equilibrium after getting socked by Sass, but once he did, everyone in the room became background noise as he sprinted out the door. He had to catch her before she left. He had to straighten this out, right now.

  However, he was too late. Sass’s red Corvette peeled out of the parking lot and took a left on Colfax before he was halfway across the lot.

  Shit! He sprinted through the rain to his car—his real car, a 2005 Ford Thunderbird. It was a compromise, a newer car, something Jordan preferred, with a classic feel, something his father insisted upon. After fumbling the keys in the ignition, he followed Sass in similar fashion, a left on Colfax and right onto Colorado Boulevard.

  It was five o’clock on a Monday, which meant it was rush hour. Even though a chase was futile, with the roadways as congested as they were, he couldn’t help himself. He had to do something. Dammit! How could he have been so stupid? Banging his fist against the steering wheel, Jordan swore until he was out of breath. Why couldn’t he do anything right? He shouldn’t be surprised about the shop. His father had a rap sheet of disasters that Jordan had caused over the years that stretched from here to California. Carlyle’s Classics and Jordan just didn’t go together. Whenever he tried to fit, he screwed up.

  But there was one thing that went together. Jordan and Sass. As unpredictable as she was—including that hard uppercut of hers—Jordan cared about her. A lot. He needed her. Knowing that he’d hurt her was like someone stabbing him in the gut with a blunt object and then twisting. He had to find her. He had to make it better. Then, he needed to make love to her and hold her and after that? He didn’t know what he’d do after that, but he’d figure something out because being with Sass made him feel more alive than anything, even more alive than when he had a pencil and paper in hand.

  Just as Jordan was entering onto the I-70 freeway he saw Sass’s car, parked at the Mobil station he’d just passed. Crap! He was stuck on the freeway now and would have to take the next exit and double back.

  By the time he got back onto the freeway and then exited at Colorado Boulevard, he was on the wrong side of the road. Cutting people off in order to get over, Jordan ignored the horn blasts and focused on the Corvette that was now racing out of the parking lot, spraying a few pedestrians with muddy water, without care. The car turned with such speed, the back end fishtailed, almost clipping an SUV.

  Sass was upset. He couldn’t blame her, but her driving was erratic and that scared him. He did a U-turn at the lights and followed her up to the next freeway entrance. It wasn’t easy to keep her in sight, particularly once they were on the interstate. If she was going straight back to the hotel, she should have taken the Quebec Street exit, but she didn’t. Instead, she wove her way through traffic sometimes even driving on the shoulder to pass a slow-moving vehicle. Her drivin
g had gone from erratic to dangerous.

  Jordan cursed and tried his best to keep up, but he refused to copy her recklessness, particularly in the rain and with slick roads. It wasn’t long before he couldn’t see her at all. The car was gone and he felt helpless, trapped in his car in rush-hour traffic with rain pounding the windshield. Running his hands down his face, Jordan let out a heavy sigh. Why hadn’t he recognized sooner how he felt about Sass? Why hadn’t he told her this morning? He should have insisted on it before she went down for breakfast. He should have made her listen.

  But she’d gotten under his skin, making him do things he hadn’t meant to do. Rash things. Wonderfully rash things. But it wasn’t just physical, this thing he felt for her. She was the first woman who made him forget everything else. Work, family, screw-ups, designing. Not knowing where she was, was driving him crazy. He tapped his leg with impatience, but that only made him think of Sass more. He turned on the radio but all he got was news. According to the announcer it was five thirty. That meant he’d been sitting in the car for half an hour. Sass was long gone. He may as well just go back to the hotel and wait for her there.

  Jordan was just about to exit off the interstate and double back when he heard the deejay describe an accident that had just been called in on the I-70, not more than a mile from where he was. Cutting back into the line of cars, he suddenly felt sick with foreboding. It couldn’t be Sass. No. She was a good driver. Impetuous, yes, but… he swallowed and turned up the radio, trying to get more details.

  …

  It was two hours later and Jordan was wet, tired and completely numb as he leaned against the sterile wall to make the call. When the girl at the hotel desk answered, Jordan asked for Buck Hogan’s room and then took a deep, trembling breath and then another. A woman with a soft drawl answered the phone on the third ring and then he heard Buck’s deep voice come over the line.

  “Mr. Hogan, it’s Jordan Carlyle.”

  “Where’s my daughter?”

  He shut his eyes and raked his hand through his hair before answering. “You need to come down to the District 5 Police Station on Peoria Street.”

  “What’s going on?” Buck’s already deep voice grew even deeper.

  Jordan’s throat constricted. When he closed his eyes he saw the flashing lights of the emergency vehicles as they appeared between the blades of his windshield wipers. He saw the wreck. The Corvette’s former beauty shattered into a million pieces on the side of the embankment. There were police and an ambulance and a fire truck. After pulling over and running toward the crash site, he’d been stalled by a police officer, but no one would tell him anything.

  “There was an accident. They want to talk to the family.”

  There was no reply. It seemed like forever before Buck whispered. “No.”

  “Buck, I—” He paused before he could go on. “I’m sorry. They won’t tell me a thing.”

  “Not Sass, too.”

  The sound of Buck’s voice breaking sent shivers down Jordan’s spine. He shut his eyes again and this time all he saw was Sass’s crooked smile. Her lovely hazel eyes. Her laughter. Her voice. Her passion. Her broken body lying beneath a tarp on the side of the road.

  Chapter Twenty

  Well, Denver certainly wasn’t Greenview, that was for sure.

  Dammit!

  Dammit all to hell!

  She hopped out of the cab, almost forgetting to pay, and slogged through the puddles to the door of the District 5 Police Station feeling sick to her stomach.

  It was official. Today was the worst day of her life.

  She strode angrily across the tile floor of the reception area and stood at a counter where a stern-looking woman in uniform sat behind a Plexiglas window. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah. I was just at a gas station a few miles from here where my car was stolen. I called the police and waited for them to show—which took forever, by the way—and they told me to come here to fill in some paperwork.”

  The woman pulled a sheet of paper from a drawer and slid it beneath the glass. “Fill this out please.”

  She moved over to the side of the counter and started filling in the forms while her eyes filled with angry tears as she wrote down the description of the car, her car, the one she’d labored over and loved more than any of the others.

  “Sass?”

  His voice was so soft, a whisper really, that Sass was sure it was her imagination.

  “Oh my God! Sass? ”

  She turned and sure enough, there stood Jordan, staring at her as if she were a ghost. “Holy hell, it is you! I thought you were…” He bit his lip. “Oh my God! You’re alive!” He rushed to her and threw his arms around her, smothering her with his big body.

  It felt so good after the rotten day she’d had. So damn good.

  Sass almost let herself collapse against him. But then she remembered and she pushed him away. Who did he think he was? He was scum and he had no right to try to comfort her.

  Just then Sass heard fast, heavy footsteps crossing the tile floor. She turned and saw Buck approaching, looking pale and worn. When he caught sight of her, his face collapsed and Sass found herself engulfed in her father’s arms this time.

  What the hell was going on?

  “Thank God, thank God,” Buck whispered over and over again. But all Sass could do was stand there and pat her father awkwardly on the back. Finally, when his grip loosened, Sass pushed his arms away. She glanced from Buck to Jordan and then over to Mary-Lynn who appeared nearly as upset as the other two.

  “Would someone mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

  …

  Sass felt like that damned yin-yang symbol on Jordan’s back, one part utter confusion and one part clarity, as she rode in the back of her father’s Dodge Charger on the return trip to Greenview. The silence in the car felt like a leaden weight and the longer it went on, the more unlikely it was it would ever be broken. Sass wasn’t about to break it. She was too busy processing the events of the day.

  Her most recent lesson? Apparently you can’t just fill up with gas and leave your keys in the car and expect the car to be there when you get back from paying. Her ’Vette, the car she’d dreamed of having since she was a little girl, the car she’d hoped Buck would let her keep when he sold the shop. That car, her car was now bits of metal strewn across the side of the interstate. Hydroplaned, the officer said. Witnesses reported that it struck a cement truck and careened over the edge of the overpass. Thankfully no one else was hurt. Except for the driver. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

  Sass shivered involuntarily. Everyone thought it was her. Buck, Mary-Lynn…even Jordan. Squeezing her eyes and shaking her head, Sass reminded herself that Jordan was a fraud. He was a con artist with a talent for pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Tonight he’d pretended to care. But he didn’t care. He just had a hell of a lot of practice pretending. The proof was in the fact that once Buck had arrived at the station, Jordan had skedaddled, scuttling away like the cockroach he was.

  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that City-boy was just like every other man who’d come into her life. He didn’t care about her. He never had, and he never would.

  A tear slid out of the corner of her eye and meandered down her cheek unchecked. Another followed until individual tears merged into one steady stream. Her eyes spilled over and Sass angrily swiped them away.

  “Is this it? It’s darling.”

  Sass blinked and rubbed her eyes to clear them, trying to see what Mary-Lynn was seeing as they pulled up the drive to their house. Darling? Was the woman on Valium or something? The house may be one of the originals in Greenview, built in the Queen Anne style with a steeply pitched, cross-gabled roof, but its quaint design left more than a little to be desired. Buck had let the house fall into disrepair over the last twenty years as was evident by the broken spindles in the balustrade along the porch, the weeds growing out of control in the front yard and the cracked walk.

  Ju
st wait until she sees inside, Sass thought.

  But Mary-Lynn’s pretenses continued inside, all “oohing” over this and “aahhing” over that.

  “Buck, this is exactly as you described it. I love it.” Mary-Lynn turned around in a circle, eyeing the posters on the living-room wall, the piles of magazines and newspapers, the worn sofa and easy chair. “This place is so you.”

  Sass left Buck and Mary-Lynn in the living room in search of something cool to drink. She opened the fridge, but all it contained was beer and the milk that was probably sour by now. Sass poured herself a big glass of water and added ice. Then she flopped down at the table and stared at the glass.

  Buck was getting married.

  The ’Vette was gone.

  The shop was being sold.

  Jordan was a lying, cheating ass.

  She had nothing left, not even tears.

  Buck entered the kitchen behind her and then tentatively placed his big hand on Sass’s shoulder. “You okay?”

  She nodded. Not because she was, simply because there was nothing left to say or do to change anything.

  “You hungry? Do you need anything?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  Buck left his hand on her shoulder for another couple seconds. “Man, you sure scared me.”

  Slowly, Sass turned her head to peer up at her father. She blinked her sandpapery eyes. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.”

  He leaned down and did something he hadn’t done since she was a kid, he kissed the top of her head.

  After patting her shoulder one last time, he released her and pulled two bottles of beer out of the fridge. He twisted the caps off in his big fist and tossed them into the sink before taking them out to Mary-Lynn. “This is all we’ve got.”

  Sass drank her water, her limbs heavy and immovable.

  “Is this Anita?” Sass overheard Mary-Lynn ask.

  “Yes,” Buck said, slow and thoughtful.

  “Well, I can see where Sass gets her looks. Anita was a beauty, wasn’t she?”

  Pushing her chair back, Sass suddenly found energy to move. She strode straight into the living room, snatched the family photo from Mary-Lynn’s hands, and held it tight to her chest. She stumbled back into the kitchen where she tore open the drawer in search of the truck keys. Her fingers fumbled blindly as her eyes swam and her head spun. Everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, her hangover, Jordan’s betrayal, the smashed and stolen car, Buck and Mary-Lynn, it was all too much. She’d reached her max hours ago and now her ears rang as she blinked away unwanted tears. Where the hell were those stupid keys?