Bad Girls Don't (22 page)

But something was also going on within Skye. Authority-figure guys like Nathan had never been her thing. So what was it about this particular man that got to her?

That’s why she needed to figure him out. Not because she thought they had a future together. So she could get over whatever this was she had for him.

Opposites might attract, but they’d drive each other crazy over time. Nathan was a do-gooder who deserved someone equally respectable.

“Why this sudden interest in Nathan?” Sister Mary asked.

“I’m trying to figure him out,” Skye admitted.

“Difficult to do with any man, but even more so with someone as reserved as Nathan. I think you’d be good for him.”

Skye blinked at the nun with stunned disbelief. “Why do you think that?”

“You’d draw him out of his shell. Give him hope and enthusiasm for the future.”

“I’d drive him crazy,” Skye retorted. “I
do
drive him crazy.”

“Exactly.”

“Exactly what?”

“You get to him. Everyone has seen it. Right from that very first day.”

“And why is that a good thing?”

“Because you shake up his world. He’s spent the five years since his wife’s death refusing to put himself out there again.”

“I can’t really blame him for that.”

“I’m not saying I blame him. I’m saying that it’s as if he put himself in that coffin with his wife. He ended his life when she lost hers.”

Skye rubbed away the sudden, stinging tears that Sister Mary’s words evoked.

The nun patted her shoulder reassuringly. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“No, it’s just . . .”

“Yeah, it is.” Sister Mary understood Skye’s unspoken sentiment.

Feeling like an idiot, Skye took a deep breath. “Thanks for telling me what you know.”

“No problem. And, Skye, there’s one more thing I know.”

“What’s that?”

“That Nathan would be good for you, too. He’d be your anchor and you’d be his kite. He’d keep you grounded and you’d give him hope to fly again.”

“What makes you think I want to be grounded?”

Sister Mary just gave her a look.

“If I wanted to get grounded, I could do it on my own,” Skye said defensively. “I don’t want to be tied up like that.”

“The town bad girl talking to a nun about being tied up.” Sue Ellen shook her head as she joined them. “I never thought I’d hear such a thing. What are you two doing back here?”

“I’m buying that couch.” Skye pointed to it.

Sue Ellen stared at it in horror. “You aren’t!”

“I am.”

“That couch is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree of couches.”

“Yeah, it is,” Skye cheerfully agreed. “And we’re going to make it look beautiful.”

“By burning it and putting it out of its misery?” Sue Ellen asked.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Sister Mary said.

“Hey, I go to church every Sunday.” Sue Ellen was instantly on the defensive. “Not your church, but the Baptist one.”

Sister Mary grinned. “I’m happy to hear that, but it’s not what I meant. I was referring to the couch makeover.”

“I like those makeover decorating shows on HGTV. Home and Garden TV,” she clarified for the nun’s benefit.

“Me, too.”

Sue Ellen was stunned. “You watch HGTV?”

“Yes.”

“I didn’t think nuns did that.”

“There’s a lot you probably don’t know about nuns.

Like the fact that there are more nuns over seventy than there are under thirty.”

“Hey, don’t look at me,” Skye said. “I wouldn’t make a good nun.”

“I would,” Sue Ellen declared. “If I wasn’t a Baptist and didn’t look pale when not wearing jewel-tone colors. But should you ever want to buy a double-wide trailer, sister, then I’m your girl.”

Sister Mary said dryly, “I’ll keep that in mind.”

As Skye led Toni out of the thrift shop, she wondered if she’d ever be able to keep Nathan out of her mind. The odds weren’t looking real good at the moment.

 

 

Nathan sat in the squad car, filling out a status report on the noise complaint he’d just responded to. Usually, the Regency Trailer Park was a fairly quiet place, aside from Mrs. Trimble’s 911-dialing parrot, but today the parrot had added something new to its repertoire. It had started shrieking obscenities through Mrs. Trimble’s open window, causing her neighbors to complain.

“Wilson started watching cable TV without my realizing it,” Mrs. Trimble tearfully explained. “He knows how to use the remote control.”

“When he starts to rant, you might want to keep your windows closed,” Nathan suggested.

“I’ll do that. Thank you so much, Sheriff. Uhm, while you’re here, I wanted to ask you about that woman who took Owen’s money.”

“What woman?” Nathan asked, though he was almost certain he knew who Mrs. Trimble was talking about.

“The one with the strange name. Skye, is it? An innocent-sounding name for someone who causes so much trouble.”

“Do you know her?”

“I’ve never spoken to her, but I’ve seen her around town. Flaunting her body the way she does. Poor Owen didn’t stand a chance.”

Nathan knew the feeling. His own chances of being unaffected by Skye had long since evaporated.

“You keep an eye on her, Sheriff. She’s up to no good, I just know it. Rock Creek would be better off without her sort.”

Nathan left Mrs. Trimble’s trailer, her words still ringing in his head.
Keep an eye on her
. He’d done more than that. He’d kept his hands on her, every inch of her. And he was aching to do it again.

Angry with himself over his temporary lapse in allowing Skye back into his thoughts, Nathan focused his attention on checking out the neighborhood as he drove back to the station. When he saw a group of kids hanging around a storage shed when they should have been in school, he stopped. Most of the kids took off, but he recognized them and would be speaking to their parents later. For now, he focused on the one he’d caught. Jay.

Nathan fixed him with the steely stare he’d perfected as a Marine. “Why aren’t you in school?”

“School sucks.”

“Does your mom know you’re not in school?”

“She don’t care. She don’t care about nothing but—” Jay’s mouth clamped shut.

Nathan knew his mom. She had a drinking problem and he’d been called in to break up a domestic dispute with her and a live-in boyfriend a couple of times. Nathan had gotten Jay involved with the Big Brother folks, and had thought that was working out.

He’d made a point of intervening with kids like Jay, taking them on field trips to the juvenile detention facilities to warn them away from the mistakes that others had made, before they did something they might regret the rest of their lives.

Nathan came from a family of do-gooders. It was something of a joke in the Thornton family. But also a matter of some pride.

So he sat there with Jay and listened to him. Sometimes, that’s all it took to make a difference.

 

 

As Skye approached the Tivoli Theater, holding Toni by the hand, she noticed a biker parked out front. He wore jeans and a black leather vest with no shirt underneath, and he had more tattoos than Lulu. His head was covered with a bandanna and his white beard was shaggy. He hopped off his Harley and greeted her.

“You must be Skye. I’m Lulu’s grandfather, Jerry. I just got back into town from South Dakota. Lulu tells me you could use my help.”

“That’s right. I bought the theater, and it needs renovating before I can reopen it. I heard you were an electrician.”

Jerry nodded. “For twenty years. Want me to look things over for you?”

“That would be great.”

“I can do it now if you’ve got the time.”

“I’ve totally got the time.” She led him inside the theater. “A lot of the main switches are in the office.” Skye hadn’t spent much time in there since she and Nathan had gotten intimate—not returning to the scene of the crime, so to speak. Not that sex between two consenting adults was a crime by any stretch of the imagination. At least, not in her book.

Nathan was working with an entirely different set of guidelines. He’d been married to a woman who was everything to him. Skye had never had that in her life. Never been married. Never found the one man who was everything to her.

In the past, she’d liked her guys dramatic—artistic and edgy. Like Toni’s father, a musician and all-around player in search of heavy-metal glory. He’d certainly taken off fast enough after hearing the news that Skye was pregnant.

Given her history, it surprised Skye that she’d felt such intense chemistry with Nathan. And that chemistry hadn’t diminished any because they’d had sex. If anything, it had increased.

And it also wasn’t like her to avoid a place just because it reminded her of a man.

“What about the main fuse box or circuit breakers?” Jerry’s question interrupted Skye’s thoughts. She didn’t usually indulge in thinking about past mistakes.

“I don’t have a clue where those are,” Skye admitted. “Tyler might know if he’s around.”

“That’s okay. I’ll find what I need.”

She showed Jerry into the auditorium, where his attention became focused on the organ in the corner. “Oh, man, a Wurlitzer organ with four hundred and fifty pipes.” He reverently ran his fingers over the keys before wincing at the sound. “I’d be glad to tune this for you.”

“You know about this kind of stuff?”

Jerry nodded.

Tyler joined them, preventing Jerry from going on about the wonders of the organ as he’d clearly wanted to do. Skye left the two men together and took Toni with her into the lobby, where Angel met them with a picnic lunch of tofu hot dogs and roast-veggie sandwiches. They sat on metal folding chairs and drank iced green tea.

Afterward, Toni sat on an old quilt and played. She wasn’t wearing her tiara today, which was rare for her.

With Toni busy, and Tyler and Jerry off in the backstage area, Skye felt free to quiz Angel. “How is it going with Violet?”

“She’s having her hair done today. With Mabel.”

Mabel was Serenity Falls’ leading gossip.

“Everything she says will probably end up in Mabel’s blog tomorrow,” Skye noted.

“I warned her about that.”

“And what about Tyler? Did you warn him about your dinner with Adam?”

“I haven’t told him about any of the meetings.”

“Meetings? As in more than one?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“So you’re sneaking around behind Tyler’s back to see a capitalist pig?”

“It’s not like that. I’m helping Adam become a better human being.”

“By getting up close and intimate with him?”

“I am not having sex with him.”

“Not yet.”

“We just meet and talk sometimes.”

“If it’s all so innocent, why haven’t you told Tyler about it?”

“Because he wouldn’t understand.”

“You’ve got that right. If I don’t understand, he certainly won’t.”

“I don’t understand why you’re making such a big deal out of this.”

“Because it
is
a big deal. Adam is trying to woo you over to the dark side.”

“Oh, please.” Angel rolled her eyes. “Quite the opposite is true. I’m trying to woo him over to the light.”

“And how’s
that
working?”

“Hard to tell for sure, but I’m making some improvements. He wants to learn how to meditate.

“I’d call that a pretty small improvement.”

“It’s a start.”

“Exactly. And I don’t want to see you get anything started with Adam.”

“Not even his enlightenment?”

“He’s probably just conning you about that.”

“When did you become so cynical?”

“I was born that way.”

“Yeah, you kind of were.” Angel had to agree. “But it got worse when Rex left.”

“You never quite get over the pain of being dumped that way. You definitely move on, but it changes you,” Skye admitted.

“That’s how I felt about Adam’s dumping me. He didn’t know I was pregnant, though, and Rex did. That makes a difference.”

“The only difference I want to focus on at the moment is making a difference in this theater,” Skye said. “It’s going to be great when it’s done. We can set up fund-raisers, feature a foreign-film night. We could even do our own version of the Sundance Film Festival and show short documentaries by brilliant, cutting-edge independent filmmakers. And we could do special displays here in the lobby, featuring local artists, starting with your fabric art—your scarves and hats and the wall hangings you’re starting to explore. The Tivoli will be a showcase for dreams.”

“And we Wright women have big dreams,” Angel said proudly.

“Well, some of us do. You and I represent the wilder side of the Wright women. Violet and Julia represent the prune-serious side.”

“That’s not fair to your sister.”

“Fine. Whatever. I don’t want to argue about her. I just want to savor this moment, creating a dream.”

But later that night, the sound of breaking glass woke Skye, right in the middle of an incredibly sexy dream about Nathan. Her maternal instincts immediately clicked into action, and she ran to check on Toni first. But her daughter was sound asleep, Gravity cuddled at the foot of the bed, snoring slightly. So the kitten hadn’t broken anything.

Moving into the living room and looking out the front window, she saw a dark figure down below, throwing something at the marquee of the theater. She yanked open the stubborn double-hung window and leaned out to yell, “Hey!”

The vandal turned tail and ran before Skye could get a good look at him . . . or her.

 

 

“I got a report of vandalism here at the theater,” Nathan said as he walked into the lobby the next morning.

He was back in uniform, looking all official and exuding bossy vibes. Skye should have been totally turned off. Instead, she wanted to mess him up, ruffle his hair, tear open his shirt, and lick his warm skin.