Ineffable (33 page)

She’d been dealing with UV sensitivity since she was a young girl, but lately it seemed to be escalating. If she stood out in the sun for just a few minutes without something covering her head she got so dizzy she swooned, and her skin felt like it was being scraped from her bones with pumice. It had to be related to her not eating. Her immune system was probably getting weak. She’d probably catch the next cold that made the rounds and end up in the hospital.

Did they serve rare meat in hospitals? Probably not. With a heavy sigh Peada slipped her sun glasses on her face, wound a scarf around her neck, plopped a hat on her head to ensure all skin was covered and headed out to wait for the school bus.

It came on schedule a few minutes later, and she nodded at a few people before she took her usual seat. The new kid got on a four stops later. He nodded at her then sat down across the aisle. Peada supposed technically he wasn’t the new kid anymore. He’d been in Shuttley almost a year now, but he hadn’t made many friends and remained outside of most groups, preferring to keep to himself, thus she still thought of him as new.

Not that the girls at Shuttley High didn’t want to get to know Bastien Suirre. He was gorgeous, tall and had a British accent. He was also fabulously rich. She’d heard every detail of his life dissected in minute detail by her female classmates. Most of whom had thrown themselves unsuccessfully at his head in hopes of getting his attention.

She grinned thinking of the foolish things she’d heard girls say and do trying to attract him. Dropping things for him to pick up, asking for his help opening stuff or swearing they needed a ‘man’s’ opinion and passing 10 other males to solicit his.

Bastien never took the bait though; he never even seemed to notice the machinations going on around him. He’d just give whatever he had in his well-mannered way and return his attention elsewhere. He was nice to everyone, but when no one was looking Peada often saw him scowl like his thoughts were tangled around something serious.

Peada had even heard boys trying to get close to him. Angling unsuccessfully to be invited over to his ginormous house at the end of town with its tall black gates, lush green lawns and those spooky woods in back.

“You getting off?”

Peada looked up and realized they’d arrived at school. Everyone had already gotten off the bus except for her and Bastien. He was standing there like he always did, waiting politely for her to pass.

“Sorry,” she muttered, scooting ahead of him.

Their eyes met again as they headed off in different directions, and Peada’s narrowed behind her shades, wondering what she’d seen just then, a frisson of something unusual. For a moment she thought she saw a shadow next to him, almost like his shadow only older, maybe? Suddenly she felt as if the person standing in front of her wasn’t all there was. But then she blinked, and all she saw was Bastien, in all his tall, British handsomeness. She decided it was nothing as she hurried to beat the first bell…

Paying For It

Some things you just can’t control. You could do everything right. Do everything in your power to make things work, and sometimes, they just won’t. For Petunia Ann Marshall they hadn’t. And now she was screwed.

Screwed with a capital screwed. She had no alternatives left. There was no one to turn to, no emergency fund to tap, no social service to provide aid. She could hardly believe it, but in three days she’d be homeless, literally on the street, in the middle of winter, in Chicago.

Tunie figured now would probably be a good time to start crying. As if her soul agreed, her eyes welled up, but she was in public so she gulped back her tears and tried again to think what she could possibly do to help herself. But as she had for the past few weeks, she came up with nothing. Against her will tears dripped.

“Here.” Someone thrust a white handkerchief in her face.

She looked up and found one of the coffee shop regulars at her elbow. Tall, dark and fine, her coworker Rita called him. Tunie usually let the other girls handle his order, why risk an elbow to the gut in the rush to make his coffee?

She could understand their fascination. He was tall and broad with luxurious black hair, pale blue eyes and a pink poet’s mouth, but he was also intimidating, a big time scowler. In all the months she’d worked here, she’d never once seen him with even a hint of a smile on his face.

He made her uncomfortable. Nervous, like she’d done something wrong, something for which he wanted to punish her. Logically that made absolutely no sense, but he had a way of looking at her that seemed to see not just beneath her clothes but underneath her skin.

“Oh, thank you, but I’ll just use one of these napkins.” God forbid she should get the last of her cheap, prone-to-smear-at-the-first-hint-of-moisture mascara all over that pristine hanky.

“Tell me what’s wrong.”

And just like that, he picked up her purse, which looked ridiculous in his large hand, and her tea, and set them down on the table of his booth. Then he took her by the elbow, pulled her from her seat, and reinstalled her across from his.

Well, hell, she thought, and blew out a tired breath. That’s just what she needed right now, to spill her miserable guts to some snooty stranger. Of course, he wasn’t technically a stranger. She knew what he liked to eat and drink by heart. Tall black coffee, croissant with apple butter, or a shot of espresso and steel cut oatmeal with brown sugar and strawberries, always the same things, like clockwork. And he always sat in the same booth if it was available. He did not look like he could relate to her problems, and it was completely unprofessional to engage in personal conversation with a customer. She was still wearing her work smock, for Pete’s sake.

“Now,” he said, nodding his regal head slightly as if to say, get on with it.

Tunie grinned, watched his eyes narrow on her mouth as he tried to figure out what was funny. He was really impatient, but she found that she liked his bossiness. Her grin faded. Maybe if she’d been a bit bossier she wouldn’t be in this mess. Screw it. She needed to tell someone, and while she thought it unlikely, maybe he’d see a way out of this shit storm that she’d overlooked.

“I’m being evicted. I paid my rent,” she hastened to say. “But my new landlord says there is no record of it for the last six months, and he wants me out.”

“Why didn’t you just show him your canceled checks?”

“I did. But he says the money never made it to the books. I could sue, but I don’t have money for first and last month’s rent on a new apartment let alone lawyer, and suing won’t find me a place to live. I thought about just ignoring him, but that’s squatting, and I can’t afford to have him lock me out and confiscate my things while I’m working. I’d be naked as well as homeless. So here I am,” she finished, taking a shaky sip of tea.

“Surely you can scrounge up or borrow money to get into a new place.”

“No, actually I can’t,” she said calmly, manfully resisting the urge to toss her tea in his supercilious face. “The rent on my current place is very low, and my old landlady didn’t require a deposit before she let me have the place.”

They sat staring at each other, Tunie pinching her own leg beneath the table to keep from fidgeting.

“There’s something you’re not telling me.”

Smart and fine. She’d have to tell Rita. “I can’t prove anything, but I think the old landlord’s son may be the reason my rent never made it on the books. I rented the studio from his mother. A very nice old lady I met in this coffee shop. She used to come in all the time.”

His fingers twirled, an irritable gesture for her to get to the point. “Anyway, about six months ago, she asked me to make the checks out to her directly because she was having some work done on the building. I didn’t think anything of it. But she went to live in a nursing home not long after, I stopped getting rent receipts, and then the building was sold.”

“Didn’t it occur to you that something was wrong when you stopped getting rent receipts?”

“Yes,” she said shortly, not appreciating his tone.

He obviously thought she was stupid. Her whole unload to a stranger strategy would henceforth require a completely different type of stranger.

“But I figured my cashed checks were proof since I put “rent” on them along with the month and year.”

“What about your lease?”

“No lease.”

He sighed, as though sad to confirm that she was indeed stupid. And looking at it from his perspective, it was a good point: why had she thought low rent meant no need for a lease?

“So what are you planning to do now?”

“I, I don’t know,” she admitted.

What she didn’t admit was that her new landlord was trying to get her to sleep with him, that part of this was just an excuse to get rid of her because he was pissed she wouldn’t roll over with her legs in the air like a good little girl. Although knowing his perverted fat ass she’d probably be on her knees suffocating under his enormous belly. Squatting was also out of the question because she’d have to get the locks changed to keep him out after her 30 days’ notice ran out. She wouldn’t put it past the disgusting creep to have them changed again just to screw her.

“I can’t quite believe it,” she said quietly. “But soon I’ll be homeless. “I even thought about turning a few tricks,” she admitted, laughing shakily. “But who would pay for my scrawny self?”

“I would,” he said promptly. “How much are you asking?”