Trick (8 page)

“Thank you, sir. I’m still trying to earn my place at the firm, though. Maybe some other time.”

“Some other time for what?” I hear Daisy’s voice chirp.

“Turks and Caicos, naturally,” I say, my voice dripping with sarcasm.

“Hi, Mr. Mills,” Daisy says, pulling up a chair next to me. “Hi, I’m Daisy.” She waves lightly to Clay, who obviously perks up at the sight of Daisy in her light blue, curve hugging sundress. He’d be an idiot not to notice her.

“Pleased to meet you,” he says. “Can I get you a drink?”

“Yeah, I’ll have—”

“Lemon Gingertini? It’s no problem, Clay, I’ll go in and make it,” I cut in.

“You don’t have to, Har,” Daisy says. But she slips out of her chair and into mine, closer to Clay. I fight the smile twitching at the corners of my mouth.

“Absolutely no problem, I’ll be right back.”

I make my way into the kitchen and pull the ginger syrup from the fridge. As I’m dragging the step stool over to the corner of the room where the liquor cabinet is, I see a single headlight flash from the kitchen window. I pause, becoming completely still for a moment, just long enough to listen for it. I close my eyes and hold my breath—everything short of crossing my fingers, like a kid wishing for a new toy. I used to lay in bed, waiting for it so I could sneak out and spend the night with
Gunner. And it’s there. The familiar growl of Gunner’s motorcycle. I’d recognize it anywhere.

I don’t hesitate. I bolt for the front door, leaving Daisy’s half-made drink on the counter. She’ll thank me later, though, I bet she even ends up having a little fun with Clay. Dad will surely be furious when he realizes I’m gone. But as much as he said he was going to stay away, Gunner is here. And that’s what matters right now.

CHAPTER 6

GUNNER

I just planned on driving by. I was useless at work anyhow, so what harm could just passing by do? I had to make sure stalker-ass Rochelle wasn’t here. I didn’t plan on being seen. But fuck me, Harlow is running down the drive toward me and what the hell am I supposed to do? Bolt? That’s even too dick for me. Tell her I made a wrong turn? That’s too stupid to believe.

No, I’ve got no other choice but to suck it up and tell her the truth. Maybe not the part about how my body has ached to be back inside of her all day, but the part about how Rochelle is on a rampage I don’t think she’ll quit anytime soon—unless I put a ring on that finger of hers.

It would solve the problem. Both female-based problems in my life right now. It’d get Rochelle off my back, and force Harlow to accept once and for all that she’s too damn good for me. Always has been.

“Gunner. What are you doing here?” Harlow pants. I know she’s been running, but her being out of breath reminds me of last night when she panted my name with each thrust of my dick inside of her.

“I need to talk to you. Can we go somewhere?” This is a fucking bad idea, but I’m not hanging around here to wait for her mean-as-shit father to come out and throw me off of his land with a shotgun pointed between my eyes. Or at my balls.

Her eyes move from my beat up bike to her white, lacey dress. She was probably enjoying a nice dinner with her dad and his friends based on the line of Mercedes and Audis in the driveway. She isn’t exactly dressed for any place I’d take her.

“I couldn’t stop thinking about you,” she answers, sliding onto the back of my bike without hesitation and wrapping her tan arms around my waist. “Let’s go.”

I kick start my bike and speed away from the Mills’ grand estate. I met Mr. Mills a couple of times over the years. When Harlow and I were sneaking around together, he found us in their greenhouse. Luckily, we’d just tugged most of our clothes back on, otherwise that would have been a sight for the old man. He figured I was just some worker on his grounds trying to mess with his daughter. He cursed and yelled and told me to leave and never come back.

I bumped into him again after Harlow and I had split up, at the bank. I’d just come from closing on my bar and was dressed in my only suit. He struck up a conversation with me as we waited in the long line, not remembering how he’d thrown me out of his palace a year before. I wanted to tell him who I was. Remind him how he told me I was a good-for-nothing son-of-a-bitch, and that I’d never lay a hand on his daughter. I wanted to tell him about all of the zeros in my bank account, and that if I wanted to, I could be dick deep in his daughter right now. But I didn’t. I just talked a good talk and politely walked away when it was my turn at the counter.

I don’t know if that makes me a coward, or a better man.

He came into Tricks once, and I poured him a bourbon after bourbon and listened to him talk about his wife, Harlow’s mom, who had passed away years before, and how he was wasting time on this younger gal now even though he didn’t love her. That sometimes, things just make sense, so you do them.

That’s sort of why I’ve hung with Rochelle so long. She isn’t the love of my life, never will be. I think she even knows and accepts that. But we make sense. We both come from tough childhoods on the road, fathers that are shady assholes, and siblings we’d be fine never speaking to again. She is sexy as hell, pretty damn hilarious when she wants to be, and doesn’t expect a fairytale.

Talking to Mr. Mills that night was the first time I’d realized that other people had the same feeling about love as I did, and it shocked the shit out of me that I could actually share the old asshole’s point-of-view.

I park my bike in the gravel parking lot of Stroker’s pool hall and help Harlow down.

“I thought we were going to talk? It’s not exactly quiet in there,” she says, following me to the door. She looks disappointed.

“It’s crowded, yeah. Trust me, it’s better that way.”
Because if we’re alone, we both know damn well what’ll happen.

The place is a dump. There’s wood
paneled walls, old red carpet, and the only lights are the dim, blue neon ones overhanging each of the twelve pool tables in a row. At the end is an old, scratched dance floors where has-been beauties and drunken losers drape themselves over each other and sway. It’s no place I want to bring Harlow, no place she deserves, but it’s out of the way and there’s no chance Rochelle or any of her friends will see us here.

Harlow makes her way to a booth in the corner while I grab us two draft beers.

“I was surprised to see you at the house,” she says, then takes a long drink of the skunk beer. “Not a bad surprise, just, you know...what do you want to talk about?”

She’s fumbles over her words, nervously. The music turns on in the place, louder than normal. Ear-splitting, whiny-ass country music.

“I wanted to talk to you about what I’ve been doing since the last time we saw each other,” I say.

“What?” she says, pointing to her ear. “It’s so loud in here!”

“I said, since I last saw you—”

“I can’t hear you!” she yells and leans in even closer.

“Never mind.” I’m getting frustrated. I glance around the sad room. “Do you want to dance?” I yell across the table.

She pulls her head back in surprise. “You don’t dance, Gunner. Like, ever.”

“You do, though. I can talk to you easier if you’re...close.” And I guess if I have to, I’ll hold onto those sweet hips and get to feel her move against me one more time before I lay the situation with Rochelle on the table and send Harlow running for good.

Harlow nods and springs up from the bench.

The way she moves is and always has been grace in motion. I’m not poetic about much, but Harlow’s body was made for music. It makes me have a little regret over being such an asshole when we were younger and I refused to dance. Because what would happen, every damn time, is she’d rush to the dance floor, and the sexy way she moved would have every guy from every corner of the place drooling until some dumb fuck who didn’t know she was mine tried to grind against her.

At which point my vision would go red and my fists would start swinging.

Back then I thought I was defending what was mine or whatever. Now I realize I was ruining, over and over again, her chance to freely do the thing she loved.

So maybe tonight is a way to repent for all the sins of my past. And, maybe, it’s a way to give her one last good memory of me that doesn’t include being naked and writhing around in the sheets before we say goodbye forever.

Harlow shimmies over to the old ass jukebox, taps some ornery looking bastard on the shoulder, and smiles with delight when he produces a few quarters in exchange for some dollars after she asks with her pouty bottom lip poking out. I keep my fists at my side as the old asshole ogles her up and down while she sways her hips and throws her change in. The whiny, sad music screeches to a stop and the drunks swaying on the dance floor perk up.

I didn’t know the song, but it’s sung by a girl with a voice like icy lemonade on a hot day. The voice coats a beat that has everyone’s feet tapping in time. Harlow takes my hand and laughs full-on when I twirl her to the floor. Barstools empty and pool games stop while people come to the floor to dance or crowd around to watch.

To watch Harlow.

Why the hell did I ever throw punches when people drew to her? It’s like hating a moth for flying at the light over and over. She seems to have a halo round her, but not one of those goody gold ones the angels have ringing their heads. This halo glows around her entire body, every sexy-as-sin curve and long, sweet line. I’m not the only one who can’t keep their eyes off of her, and I tug her tight to me.

“Shit, kitten, you sure as hell know your way around a dance floor, don’t you?” I say in her ear, loving the way the heat of the pool hall is making her neck slick with sweat. Her hair sticks to it a little, and it reminds me of the way it looks when we’re in bed, skin to skin, moaning and rubbing up each other.

“It’s my major,” she says. There’s a big proud smile on her face, and it’s a knife in my heart.

I never asked about her damn major.

I never asked what college she goes to, even though I listened to her chatter about how excited she was to go that whole summer. I never asked who she goes to put yellow roses on her mama’s grave with. Because, that summer, she went to do that at my mama’s gravesite with me, and I promised I’d be the one to it with her at her mama’s. I never asked if her friend Daisy got that tattoo of a fairy on her hip, though I know that if she did, Harlow didn’t get a matching one like her friend wanted. Harlow’s hips are smooth and sun-kissed and my lips and hands know every square inch.

There are thousands of questions I never bothered to ask her. Questions that make a difference. Questions that can’t be fucked away.

She’s got her back to me, and she slides down slightly as we move to the beat, letting her plump little ass nestle against the jut of my dick. She reaches her hands to both sides and links her fingers with mine, pulling my hands to those hips I was just thinking about.

I turn her around in my arms, and she tilts her neck back, those clear blue eyes looking to me like I have all the answers.

Too bad the truth is, I don’t have a single one.

I knew from the second she strolled into my bar that taking back up with her was going to be a world of trouble. I had no idea just how much trouble I was looking at.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” she asks.

I tighten my hands on her hips and am about to tell her that this is the wrong direction for us, that she and I need to pull the hell back before she gets her heart crushed. I swear on a stack of Bibles, the words are on the tip of my tongue when an old George Strait song comes on.

It’s like a switch flips in my brain, pressing past all the fucked-up confusion of the present and taking me right back to being ten and in the kitchen with my mama. She was cooking her famous seafood stew, and this song came on.

“C’mon over here, good looking.” She smiled at me and put her wooden spoon on the counter. “When George gets to singing with that fiddle, this mama’s feet have to dance.”

“Aw, Mama, I don’t wanna dance,” I complained. “If the other guys come in, they’ll tease me.”

Her smile got wider and she took me in her arms. “Beautiful boy, I taught every one of those fat heads to dance. Now it’s your turn. Before I know it, you’re gonna be taking pretty girls out to dance till all hours of the night. And no boy of mine is going to be out in this world without knowing how to two step properly.”

“I can’t stand girls,” I protested, buy my mama just laughed, turned the stew down, and held her hands out. “Trust me, baby, you’re gonna look just like your daddy, which means you’ll have so many girls chasing you, you’ll have to carry a stick.”

“Sounds good to me,” I muttered.

“C’mon, sourpuss. I won’t be happy
till you let me show you how to dance.”

I stepped into her arms, breathing in the comforting smell of my mom’s sweet perfume and the seafood stew bubbling on the stove. She took me through the steps, quick-quick, slow, slow, quick-quick, slow, slow...

“Not so bad is it?” she asked, and I smiled sheepishly. “That’s my love. You’ll make some girl very happy one day.”

“Gunner?” Harlow asks, her face pale. “Are you okay?”

She’s worried, I realize. Worried about me. Hell, my mama would have loved Harlow so damn much. It breaks my heart she never got to meet her.