There goes a dream down the crapper.
He tossed a five-dollar bill on the table to cover his Diet Pepsi and started to stand. He halted when Joey grabbed his wrist aggressively. Anger building like a volcano in him, Z slowly looked up and met Joey’s stare.
“Let go of my hand, you bloated little weasel.”
Joey’s hand skittered across the table like a frightened crab.
“No offense, Z. Honest,” Joey wailed. His thin face brightened. “Hey, it’s not all bad news! Frankie told me to tell you that if you ain’t got his money anymore—”
“I spent his money, and a good chunk of my own, to build the bike that roadkill commissioned me to build!”
The bar went silent at his roaring shout. Joey beadily glanced around at the frozen bartender and ten or so other patrons and. The Crucifixion Café’s patrons were very accustomed to brawls and violence, but not usually on a sunny spring Wednesday morning.
“The good news is,” Joey continued in a muted, conciliatory tone, “Frankie told me I’m authorized to offer you a job. He wants you to work security for him. A big guy like you… Frankie knows your skills, Z. He sees your value.”
“I see his value, and it’s worse than shit. Frankie’s offered me jobs a dozen times before, including racing on the circuit for him. I’ve always refused,” Z stated flatly, suddenly too weary to continue this pointless conversation.
He stood and stared down at a sweaty-looking Joey the Slant. “You can tell Frankie the same thing I always have in the past. I’m a lone wolf. I don’t work for anyone but myself. Tell him I’ll try and sell the bike. I kept a strict account of my expenses for building it, just like I always do. I’ve sent Frankie an updated copy. If it sells, I’ll give him back what he paid, minus the price of all the cash and labor I put into it. But if I come up short on the quick sale, he’s going to be the one that owes. Tell him he can come and work for me, if he wants to make up for the difference.”
Beneath his tan and a layer of sweat, Joey went pale. “You can’t say something like that to Frankie.”
“I’ll say it to his face if he has the balls to show it to me after screwing me over like this. I had plans for that money… plans Frankie just fucked all to hell.”
He paused as he walked past Joey. A large shadow had just darkened the sunny entrance to the bar. Another one followed.
“Jesus,” Z bit out in frustrated exhaustion. He gave Joey an accusatory stare. “You brought Dim and Dum along with you?” he asked, nodding in the direction of the two enormous thugs that had just entered he bar. He recognized the pair. Apparently, so did some of the other customers in the dive, because four of them suddenly made a dash for the door. Dim and Dum had been working “security” for Frankie Saccardi for a few years now. They held the same position Frankie was so generously offering Z.
“It was Frankie’s idea to bring them,” Joey said, sounding smugger now that Frankie’s gorillas were behind him.
“I’ll bet it was. At least he wasn’t stupid enough to send Emory Martin.”
“Martin wasn’t working for us the night you rearranged his face, Z! We had nothing to do with him testifying against you. He wasn’t working for Frankie back then, and that’s the truth.”
“Fuck me,” Z seethed, his gaze stuck on Dim and Dum. Feeling irritated and defeated, he headed over to the bar. His Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor had told him dozens of times that he was most vulnerable to relapse when he was under stress.
And this was a pretty damn stressful moment.
“Jim Beam, neat,” he told the bartender. Adrenaline poured into his veins, making them sting. He didn’t look around, but he sensed Dim and Dum flank his shoulders. He assessed what was in front of him, looking for options to defend himself, all the while pretending to be a man lazily awaiting his drink. His gaze landed on a pool cue behind the bar. Its tip had been broken, and the bartender had been fixing it while business was slow.
One of the trolls tapped him on the shoulder at the same time that the bartender set Z’s drink in front of him.
“Have pity, would you?” Z asked, picking up the glass. “If you’re going to pulverize a guy, the least you can do is allow him a little anesthesia, right?” He glanced over his shoulder into Dum’s rock-like face. He held up the whiskey in a sarcastic toast and lifted the glass toward his mouth.
“Z?”
His hand frozen in midair, Z looked over his shoulder upon hearing the woman’s voice call his name. A heat wave struck him.
Am I hallucinating?
“Ursa?”
He spun around, gaping at the highly innocuous vision of his childhood next-door neighbor, Ursula Esterbrook. He hadn’t seen her since… had it been New Years? It had to have been. He’d spent last Thanksgiving in County Jail for assault against Emory Martin, public drunkenness, and disturbing the peace. Christmas had been spent in rehab.
But no, it hadn’t been New Years, he realized. He’d been home for the New Years holiday, but Ursa had gone skiing with a college friend. He hadn’t seen Ursa since last Labor Day… that holiday he recalled most because of the highly unsettling thing he’d glimpsed going on between Ursa’s mom, Ilsa Esterbrook, and Stephen, Grandpa Joe’s caregiver.
Ursa couldn’t have looked more out of place in the rough biker bar. She was all golden, crisp, and fresh: A perfect, new flower blooming in a pile of mildew, sweat and dirt. She wore black pants and some kind of satiny, silky button down peach blouse. There was a tie on it, which Z supposed was supposed to make it look business-like. But seeing as how the blouse hugged a narrow waist and generous, firm breasts, the blouse hardly would make a guy think of business. She carried a brief case on her shoulder, and her dark blonde hair was piled up on her head, a few soft tendrils brushing her smooth cheeks. He’d have been sure he was seeing things, if it weren’t for her wide, clear eyes.
No one could accurately hallucinate Ursa’s eyes. They were like pools of calm, pure water tinted fresh green.
No, it was Ursa all right, standing in this hellhole right before his very eyes.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” he demanded, an alarm blaring in his head.
She appeared unaffected by his harsh question, and equally immune to the two rough goons frowning at her.
“You’re not planning on drinking that, are you?” she asked him severely, pointing at the glass of whiskey in his hand.
Chapter Two
For several seconds, Z just stared as one horrible image after another paraded across his brain. Little, delicate, sweet Ursa Esterbrook stood there three feet away from him, and she didn’t have a clue she’d just walked into a room that was about to explode. Granted, she didn’t look little or sickly at the moment. In fact, she practically glowed with righteous indignation at the idea of him ordering a whiskey.
But that wasn’t the point.
All of his previous plans for defending himself evaporated into impossibility. Panic boiled up in him as he imagined Ursa bloodied and broken, all because of his idiotic choices.
He had to get her out of that bar. Now, while things had been tipped off balance by her unexpected entrance.
An idea struck.
“Caught red-handed,” he muttered sheepishly, turning to set the whiskey on the bar. Dim and Dum stared at Ursa, mouths hanging open like they’d just been sideswiped. Z knew exactly how they felt. A guy didn’t witness a righteous angel strolling into hell on a daily basis.
“Gentleman, I’d like you to meet my probation officer,” he waved at Ursa. “Jennifer Rand, meet… You know, I don’t think I’ve ever heard your guys’ real names before,” Z mused, feigning puzzlement.
Dim and Dum glanced over at Joey the Slant uneasily and shuffled on their boat-sized feet.
“Z, what do you think you’re—”
“I know, I know, you caught me all right,” Z interrupted Ursa hast
ily. He held up his hands resignedly and walked toward her, putting his body between her and Dim and Dum. “I heard probation officers spied on and followed their offenders sometimes, but I didn’t think you’d take my falling off the wagon so seriously.” He grabbed her elbow, seeing the bemusement on her face segue to dawning understanding.
Out of the corner of his vision, he saw Dum start toward them. Z pushed Ursa ahead of him. She planted her high heels and turned back. Damn it, Ursa. Dum took another step toward her, and Z’s fist instinctively curled up into a hard ball.
“What are you? An idiot? She’s a cop,” he heard Joey the Slant hiss at Dum. Joey shuffled toward them, a tense expression on his face.
“She don’t look like a cop,” Dum said in a surly fashion.
“Feel free to join the dozens of convicted criminals who were stupid enough to think the same thing,” Ursa said.
Z blinked, immediately veiling his surprised glance at Ursa. She was leveling a stare at Dum that could have cowed a charging bull in its tracks.
“Your fly is open,” Ursa added deadpan, nodding at Dum’s crotch.
Dum glanced down quickly, only to flinch in embarrassment when he saw his zipper was intact. Z didn’t think he’d ever seen a man turn that particular shade of purple. He resisted a wild urge to laugh.
“What do you know about what anyone looks like, you box of rocks?” Joey the Slant said bitterly, slapping at Dum’s shoulder. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
Joey met Z’s stare as he passed. “This ain’t over, Z. Not by a long shot. Be ready to hand over either the bike, or the money.”
Z just shrugged negligently, all of his attention focused on the woman who stood next to him, all of his will concentrated on erasing threat from anywhere near her.
“Come on,” Z told Ursa tersely when they exited the bar onto a sunny spring morning. He pulled her alongside him toward his bike.
“But I have my car,” Ursa protested. “It’s parked down the street.”
“We’ll come back for it once things quiet down. I wouldn’t put it past Joey to have us followed.”
“But they can follow us on your bike too, can’t they?” Ursa asked, accepting his helmet without hesitation when he gave it to her. She shrugged off her briefcase and passed it to him while she fastened the helmet. He had to hand it to her. Despite her initial confusion at his slight of hand in the bar, she’d handled the situation like a pro. At the moment, she was all brisk business.
He handed her back her briefcase.
“Are you forgetting how I drive?” He mounted his sleek, aggressively styled custom Bonnie.
Her eyebrows arched. She nodded once in understanding, a small smile pulling at her lips.
Had her mouth always been so pink and edible looking?
Z pushed aside the inappropriate thought and gave her a hand while she straddled the seat behind him.
“What do I do with my briefcase?”
“You’re going to have to put it between us and squeeze up tight to me. Tighter, Ursa,” he said when she followed his instructions.
She tightened her hold around his waist. Her arms felt slender, but surprisingly strong. He felt her cheek press against the back of his shoulder.
“Is that tight enough?”
Not nearly, baby girl.
Shocked at his own intrusive thought, he busied himself with starting his bike.
He didn’t think of Ursula Esterbrook like he would most attractive women. He tried not to, anyway.
For Christ’s sake, get a grip. You were there when she was born.
“Where are we going?” she called out to him as they left the Crucifixion Café’s gravel parking lot.
“Were you on your way to work? Do you want me to drop you off at the hospital? I’ll have to do a little maneuvering first, to make sure we aren’t being followed,” he said as they sped along the mangy Reno backstreet where the café was located. What the hell had Ursa been doing in this scummy neighborhood to begin with?
“No, don’t worry about that. I was out doing some home visits, so they won’t expect me at the office until this afternoon,” she yelled over the roar of the engine. “Why don’t we go to my place? We can talk.”
He paused, considering. He didn’t like the idea of exposing her to his seedy life anymore than he already unintentionally had. But then again, he had complete faith in his ability to lose anyone who attempted to follow them. No one would know he’d indulged in a nostalgic moment with a neighborhood girl from his childhood.
No one but Ursa and him.
He’d never been to Ursa’s Reno apartment, where she’d moved to work as a social worker in a local hospital. But the idea of being with her in her undoubtedly clean, bright, wholesome environment—a miniature slice of the Esterbrook house in Tahoe Shores—held a strangely compelling appeal.
Maybe it was because he’d just had a close call with something so foul.
She gave him her address, and he rapidly calculated a route to get there, one that was guaranteed to expose and avoid any potential tail. He had a history of losing tails in Reno.
He was surprised, and a little irritated, at himself for not making some excuse, and getting her to a safe distance from his presence, as soon as possible. He told himself it had nothing to do with how nice her cheek felt pressed against his leather jacket, or how good it felt having her hug him so tightly… or how much he resented her damn briefcase for creating a barrier between him and her breasts pressing against his back.
No. It couldn’t have anything to do with that.
Ursa lived in a luxury apartment complex southwest of the city. She probably didn’t think of it as luxury, but he did. It was a private end unit, with two bedrooms, a pool and exercise facility on the complex, lots of windows, hardwood floors and granite countertops. Z approved of the fact that the windows were high up in the building, and the entry possessed not one, but two security doors. He had a feeling Ursa’s father would have approved of his youngest daughter’s residence just before he’d passed away, as well.
Sunshine flooded around him when she led him through the front door.
He knew Ursa’s salary at the hospital couldn’t have been huge. He also knew that after their father had died last year, all three of the Esterbrook girls had received generous trust funds. Esme was a successful clothing designer, and Sadie was a famous actress. Neither of them had probably felt the need to dip into their trust funds. But he was glad Ursa seemed to have used a little in order to get herself a comfortable, safe place in Reno.
“Sorry, it’s a little messy,” Ursa muttered, ducking her head and going over to the kitchen bar. She started stacking some newspapers that were spread out there.
“It’s so clean, it’s perfect,” he said, watching her figure from behind as she straightened the counter, his mind wandering.
Every straight male in Tahoe Shores had noticed that the youngest Esterbrook girl possessed a rack that could make a grown man cry. Z had bestowed a few black eyes while defending Ursa when a couple foul-mouthed morons had dared to salivate over her in his presence. But Z had never noticed how small her waist was, or how feminine and enticing the curve of her hips were… or that she had an ass that could make a man seriously sweat.
“It looks like a model home or something. Why should you apologize?” he mumbled gruffly, shrugging off his jacket and wiping his brow. He wasn’t sure what was wrong with him, leching after Ursa Esterbrook, of all people. Maybe it was because he was sex-starved.
Yeah, that had to be it.
He’d sworn off women ever since he’d left rehab. He couldn’t handle a relationship right now. There was too much going on in his life. He couldn’t take the drama. Not while he was trying to make his way in the world without drinking. Not while he was spending all his energy to make something of his life. The potential emotional roller
coaster of a relationship could send him right over the edge.
“I’ll turn on the AC,” Ursa said. He realized she’d seen him sweating.
“No, don’t’ bother,” he insisted, even as she hurried over to the thermostat on the wall. “Ursa, I wasn’t sweating because of that.”
She turned to face him, a small, expectant smile on her flushed face. His mouth slowly fell open.
She looked luminous in that moment, like all the golden light that filled that designer living room came from her, not the fiery globe outside the window. Fairy-girl. His old nickname for her came back to him in that moment, as did the reason he’d called her that. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d come upon her in a shady spot in her mom’s garden, or reading a book in the boulder cavern on the beach, or merely leaning against a tree with a faraway, radiant look on her face, communing with the natural beauty of Tahoe.
He’d never felt awkward around an Esterbrook girl in his life. Not even at Ursa’s dad’s funeral, during one of the worst periods of his life. It’d certainly been the worst time for the Esterbrooks.
But suddenly, Z was tongue-tied.
“Do you want me to make you some breakfast?” she asked him eagerly.
“No, that’s okay,” he mumbled, forcing himself to look away from her bright face.
“Coffee, then?”
He waved uneasily toward the door. “I should be going.” He glanced at her cautiously from beneath his brow.
She didn’t reply, but he noticed the way her radiant expression dimmed.
Then, she slowly shook her head, a determined expression stiffening her face. She was indicating he shouldn’t leave. That he couldn’t! Z blinked, sure he was seeing things again. Ursa had always been the fragile Esterbrook girl. The sweet one.
“Why are you shaking your head like that?”
“Because you’re not leaving, Z. Not until we talk. Or at least until I see you call your AA sponsor and make an appointment to see him or her. Or I see you get to a meeting.”
He shut his eyes and gave a groan of exasperation. “I wasn’t going to drink the damn whiskey, I was just trying to buy some time before those thugs beat the shit out of me.”
Wild, Wounded Hearts Page 2