It Happens

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “How’s work going, baby?” Dad asked.

  I opened my eyes and my gaze caught on Zee’s. Zee’s father chuckled, having seen the glare.

  I curled my lip up at him, too, but answered my father anyway.

  “It’s going well. I might have to hire more staff soon if it keeps doing as well as it has been,” I told him. “Turner already threatens to quit once every few days because I have her doing so much.”

  “Turner is a pain in the ass,” Zee said. “You need to find someone that doesn’t cause more trouble than she fixes.”

  I could see why he’d think that.

  Turner was a pain in the ass sometimes.

  But, that was because she was misunderstood. People hated her because she came off as a bitch.

  Well, she was a bitch. Hell, I was a bitch at times, too.

  But Turner had that RBF—resting bitch face—mastered to a fine art. She also didn’t talk to people unless she felt like it, and there were times that I definitely reconsidered having her in the front of the funeral home to work the desk and phones on those rare occasions that she was up there.

  Luckily that happened seldom, and I’d never gotten too bad of a complaint about her.

  “I like Turner,” I told him. “And she is good at her job. I just need to find someone with more responsibility.”

  “I have a suggestion,” Gordon muttered. “Got a buddy that lives in Kilgore. His daughter is in Hostel, Texas right now working at the police station. However, she wants to move back up here to further her degree and get away from her ex.”

  “Who is it?” I asked, reaching for the glass of water that’d been placed on the table.

  “That’s mine,” Zee said.

  I ignored him and took a hefty swallow, causing him to narrow his eyes.

  He gritted his teeth and held himself immobile, even though I knew that he’d rather reach forward and smack the glass straight out of my hand.

  “Her name is Katy Roberts,” Gordon continued as if his son wasn’t pissed off that I was drinking his water. “She was dating a game warden down there, and things went south. She’s ready to get gone, and she’s looking for a job. She’s overqualified as fuck, though, seeing as she’s almost got her doctorate degree in science or some shit.”

  “And she’s moving?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you think she’d like to finish that shit before she moved?”

  “The majority of it, from what I understand, is online. She’s got like a single year left of clinical rotations to receive her certifications,” he said. “But, when Luke was talking about it, he made it sound like she had a shit ton on her plate. Might be nice just to have something simple like working phones.”

  I thought about that and realized that he was probably right.

  “Tell him to give her my number,” I suggested. “Tell her she can call me whenever, unless it’s like three in the morning. I don’t do three in the morning well.”

  Zee scoffed.

  I narrowed my eyes.

  Okay, so I could do three in the morning just fine when Zee was fucking me, but that was seriously the only time I could.

  Not that I’d ever bring that up.

  Even though Zee didn’t seem to be under the same moral code as I was.

  “But you can do four o’clock in the morning just fine?” Zee asked.

  I frowned, feeling stupid all of a sudden for thinking that his train of thought strayed toward our one night of whatever the hell it was.

  “Shut your face,” I muttered darkly.

  “Why are you up at four?” my dad asked.

  I was thinking of a lie good enough to pass off as the truth when Zee continued without a care in the world to how bad it was going to piss my dad off.

  “She was running at the track, in the pitch-black darkness, with a barely-there light that illuminated like a tenth of the track,” Zee explained.

  See, here’s the thing about my dad.

  Peter ‘Pete’ Cope was a Marine for thirty years. When he got out of the Marines, he became a security officer. And not just a security officer for the mall. No, a security officer for people like senators and governors and movie stars. Though, my dad didn’t so much like the movie stars. Apparently, they weren’t as open to following orders as other people, and he didn’t like when his clients didn’t trust him implicitly.

  And what all that boiled down to was that my father was extremely security conscious.

  When I’m talking ‘security conscious’ I mean, if my father didn’t blow a gasket right now, it’d be a goddamn miracle.

  His body stiffened underneath me, and I closed my eyes, counting to ten for patience.

  I got to seven before my dad exploded.

  “You were doing what?!” Dad bellowed.

  I sighed and pulled away from him, then kicked Zee under the table, offering him a glare.

  “Some fucking guy hacked your neighbor up, and you think it’s a good idea to go to the track at four in the morning, and practically offer yourself up as a virgin sacrifice?” my father asked.

  I hissed at him. “I’m not a virgin!”

  Anymore.

  Thanks to the asshole that was currently rubbing his shin and looking at me funny.

  “Since when?” Dad asked.

  I scrunched up my nose. “I’m not talking about this.”

  “It’s a new development, or I’m sure my wife would’ve shared with me the momentous news,” he teased.

  I hated him.

  I seriously hated him.

  A few years ago, my mother and I had it out because she wanted me to stop being so overly cautious and live. Me, being the product of my father’s upbringing, had been quite overly cautious of who I dated.

  My dad had instilled in me that not only do you need to be careful of who you date, but I was also to be careful about who I let in.

  Mainly because of what he did for a living, but ultimately because he cared about his daughter and didn’t want his daughter ending up with some loser.

  And I’d taken that to heart.

  Though I’d dated, I hadn’t found anybody that I’d be willing to share my life with that in-depth.

  Meaning I wasn’t willing to just give my virginity up all willy-nilly to random strangers.

  As for what happened with Zee, that I had no explanation for.

  I was blaming my inebriated state, but if I was being honest, it was likely due to the fact that I’d always had a thing for Zee, even way before I started dating Eitan or Annmarie dated Zee. Though, that ‘thing’ died a dramatic death the moment that Zee looked at me and called me a ‘gross girl’ when he was nine and I was six.

  Though, that’d be a lie.

  Nothing had ever ended for me. Not when I was six. Not when I was fourteen. And certainly not now.

  I had a thing for Zee.

  There, I was admitting it.

  I had a huge thing for Zee, and I felt guilty for having this thing. I felt guilty that I was alive to have a thing for him, and my sister, who had originally been with him, wasn’t.

  In the beginning, it’d been because Zee had terrorized me to no end. Then it’d been because he’d been with my sister.

  Now it was because my sister had died, and I shouldn’t want the things I wanted with him.

  Should I? Was that bad? I just didn’t know.

  “Why are we talking about this?” I muttered darkly.

  “How about we talk about how you ran in the dark with no one knowing where you were, offering your body up to any man that was bad enough to take it?” he suggested.

  I scowled and lifted my eyes to see Zee’s trained on me.

  He was watching me with a weird look on his face that I knew meant he had questions.

  Questions like ‘did I take your virginity.’

  I looked away and up to my father. “I’m an adult. I had a knife and a light. I was okay.”

  “A knife isn’t goi
ng to get you anywhere,” he muttered. “And what’s a flashlight going to do for you?”

  I shrugged.

  I didn’t know. But it made me feel better to know that I had them in case I needed them.

  “Next time you want to do something stupid like that, at least inform someone that you’re going out, and when to expect you back, so they can raise the alarm if they don’t hear from you,” Dad muttered darkly.

  I sighed. “Well, if it makes you feel better, Zee volunteered himself every single Saturday for the foreseeable future.”

  Gordon glanced at his son. “You did that?”

  Zee shrugged. “I knew that you’d kick my ass if something happened to her. I wanted to make sure that she didn’t die on my watch.”

  “I’m not on your watch.” I sat back and was about to continue to lay into him, but our food arrived, as well as my drink.

  I handed Zee’s empty glass back over to him and took a healthy swallow of my sweet tea.

  I groaned at the taste. “God, that tastes good.”

  “I’m sure water would taste good, too,” Zee countered, signaling to the waitress who placed an egg white omelet in front of him.

  I gagged.

  “That looks like snot with chunks of boogers in it,” I told him.

  Zee took a bite of his booger omelet and ignored me.

  I looked down at my waffle and practically purred.

  Reaching for the syrup, I drenched each and every hole with the good stuff and then handed it over to my dad who took a small portion of it compared to me.

  “Would you like some waffle with that syrup?” Zee asked, looking at me with humor filling his eyes.

  “No,” I said. “This is the perfect proportions. Thank you for your concern, though.”

  Gordon nodded at the waitress. “Thank you, darlin’.”

  The older waitress blushed at the look on Gordon’s face.

  I rolled my eyes.

  Gordon was a habitual flirt.

  He just couldn’t control himself when it came to the ladies.

  I cut into my waffle and started to stuff it into my face, groaning when the sweetness hit my tongue.

  “God, this tastes so good,” I mumbled around my food.

  “I’m not supposed to see your food,” Zee said. “Please control yourself.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him but didn’t say another word as I continued to eat my waffle. Though, I did moan a lot.

  I didn’t look up at him the rest of the meal.

  ***

  Zee

  “Thanks for calling me,” Pete said. “And I’ll stay long enough to get her alarm seen to. Plus, the cameras will be taken care of, too.” He paused. “As long as you can supervise for me while I keep her distracted.”

  I grinned. “I think I can do that.”

  “Good.” He sighed. “Now I gotta go do some groveling. She’s pissed at me.”

  I looked at where Jubilee’s car had just disappeared out of the lot.

  “That virgin sacrifice thing really set her off,” I felt it prudent to point out. “I’m not sure how you’re going to convince her that this is a good idea.”

  ‘This’ being the security systems on both her house, as well as her business.

  Her father winced. “She was a virgin. I can’t say that I’m happy to hear that she’s not anymore.”

  I frowned.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “She’s over thirty years old!”

  And how the hell did we get on this subject?

  My father started to chuckle.

  “Pete had her scared to death about possible awful people only using her for her money. Kid’s been holding onto it for years. You don’t remember Bertha losing her shit on her daughter when her daughter said that she was going to remain a virgin forever?” my father asked.

  I looked from my father to Pete and back. “I remember the two of them having a row. But I thought it was over Jubilee not wanting to have kids.”

  “That was part of the conversation, yes.” Pete sighed and wiped his hands down his face. “You see any men sniffing around her lately?”

  Other than me? “No.”

  “Well, keep an eye out,” he suggested. “If you do, I can come out here and introduce the punk to my fist.”

  Inwardly, I winced. “Will do. What time will you need me to check in on the work?”

  Originally, I’d been planning on doing it, but Pete had decided that he had the right qualifications for it and had taken over.

  I’d been happy to allow him, as long as I had access to the cameras whenever I needed and could get to her if she needed me.

  Since I was the one living here, I didn’t think that was too much to ask.

  “I’ll give you a call this evening when she heads into work,” he muttered. “I’m going to go with her to make sure everything is on the up and up.” He paused. “Have you heard anything about the person that murdered that weirdo?”

  That ‘weirdo’ being Jubilee’s neighbor as well as the governor’s son.

  “No,” I answered. “But I know that they have quite a few people from multiple agencies working on it. Some kid from our department is working on it, too. And we’re not even in the same county that it happened.”

  He grunted a reply. “If you hear anything, I’d like to know.”

  I nodded once. “I know.”

  And I did. I wouldn’t keep secrets from him…well, I would. But the one secret I was keeping from him wasn’t something that I thought needed to be shared.

  Ever.

  “Good.” He lifted a chin to me. “Have fun.”

  I grunted in reply.

  For a few hours this morning, my father and I were going on a ride around the lake, and it’d take us about two hours. Plenty of time to get back here, as well as plenty of time on the bike that I was needing.

  I hadn’t been on a good long ride since well before what I was now calling the ‘incident.’ The incident being the night that I must’ve lost my wits and done things that never should’ve been done.

  Done things that I couldn’t stop thinking about.

  Things with a person that annoyed the living shit out of me on a regular basis.

  “You ready to ride, boy?” Dad asked.

  I looked over at him and nodded, my eyes flicking one last time in the direction I’d last seen Jubilee.

  “I was born ready,” I informed him.

  Chapter 8

  Dear Sweet Baby Jesus. Thank you for this cold front, and let all those mosquitos die and go straight to hell where they belong.

  -Jubilee’s secret thoughts

  Jubilee

  “Was all of this really necessary?” I looked in disgust at all the cameras that I could now see around my office.

  At least, the camera views, anyway.

  I hadn’t been able to see the cameras at first as my dad had walked with me into the parlor of the funeral home. Which, I’d been told, was the point.

  “It’s necessary when there’s a murderer going around your town and you lived next to said person that he murdered,” Dad said.

  “But this is a funeral home,” I said. “This isn’t anything. Who would come here? The scariest thing that has happened here was a corpse letting off gas and scaring the shit out of me about two weeks ago.”

  Dad winced. “That’s disgusting. You know how I don’t like hearing that stuff.”

  And he didn’t.

  Really, he didn’t.

  I didn’t know what it was about preserving the dead that he didn’t like, but Dad still refused to go into my mother’s mortuary. Sure, he’d walk in the door and hang out in the lobby, but he didn’t do corpses of any kind. Which meant he didn’t go to viewings. He didn’t come down to help with the bodies even though there were times that my mother had needed his help moving them.

  God forbid a problem arose in the basement where my mother did all
of her work.

  My mother could be getting murdered by a zombie corpse and my father would toss a gun down to her and tell her to handle it herself.

  I stretched my arms.

  “How do you think you’re going to be inspecting the cameras in the basement if you don’t come look at them yourself?” I teased.

  I really had no clue if that was why he was there, but I couldn’t help but tease him about his fears.

  “I got Gordon and Zee for that,” he answered. “They’re pulling up right now, as a matter of fact. They’re going to do the ones down there, and I’m doing the ones that don’t have any dead people in the room, and then we’re going to go eat dinner at Maynard’s.”

  I groaned.

  “Maynard’s?” I whined. “Really?”

  Dad grinned his ass off. “Yep.”

  Sighing long and loud, I tilted my head in the direction of my office and said, “I’ll be downstairs. Text me when you’re ready to go.”

  Dad muttered something about ‘fuckin’ zombies’ and went to meet Zee and Gordon outside.

  I chose to ignore him, and the man that made my heart skip a beat at the best of times, but made it stall in my chest when he was in leather, and practically ran downstairs.

  I arrived to find Turner on the phone, looking haggard.

  “Yes, sir.” Turner tapped her forehead lightly on the edge of the desk. “Yes, sir. That’s the mahogany. Yes, sir, it is eight thousand dollars. Yes. No. I’m sorry, but I have no control over the price. If you feel that it’s unfair, then you can take it up with the owner. I’m just the help.”

  I snorted, causing Turner to look up so fast that her head likely spun.

  “Oh, you’re in luck. The manager is right here.” She paused and held out the phone for me to take.

  I did, placing it to my ear.

  “Hello?” I answered, grabbing onto Turner’s shirt before she could make a mad dash toward the door.

  “Is this the manager of Bear Bottom Funeral Home?” the man asked.

  He sounded all hoity-toity, and I could imagine that was the first thing to set Turner’s teeth on edge.

  Turner had something against men acting like they were superior, and always had.