He wasn’t surprised she’d chosen to do something artistic for a living.
He was equally unsurprised she was good at it.
And he was further unsurprised that people spent a fortune on it.
The phone ringing again took him out of his thoughts and his eyes went from the note to Dusty’s cell next to his on the nightstand. He threw the note on the nightstand and picked up her phone, thinking, at this hour, it might be a member of her family.
But on the display there was a picture of a man and it said, “Beau Calling”.
Mike’s neck got tight as he stared at the display. The man was dark-haired and good-looking. He was wearing a beat up denim shirt and beat up jeans. His hands were shoved in his front pockets, his eyes off to the side and he’d been caught laughing.
Jesus. What was this guy doing phoning at that hour? In Texas, where the guy undoubtedly lived considering his clothes in the shot, it was even earlier.
But she’d said she was free and not one thing about Dusty had given Mike the impression she’d lie. In fact, the opposite. He’d never met anyone that was more of a straight shooter.
And Mike liked that a fuckuva lot.
The phone stopped ringing and Mike threw it on the nightstand. It wasn’t his place to answer so he didn’t.
Instead, he threw back the covers, found his boxers and tugged them on. Dusty’s phone beeped with a voicemail while he was pulling on his jeans. He ignored it, went to the bathroom, took care of business, washed his hands, splashed water on his face, wiped it dry and sauntered out.
When he did and he was nearly back to the bed, the phone was ringing again.
He stared at the man’s picture on the display, thought of the time and wondered if there was an emergency. He didn’t know if the first call was from this Beau guy but Mike hadn’t been awake for even ten minutes and, if it was, he’d called three times in that time.
“Fuck,” he muttered, tagged the phone, slid his finger on the screen and put it to his ear. “Hello,” he greeted.
Silence.
“Anyone there?” he asked when this silence stretched.
“Who’s this?” a man’s voice asked back and he sounded ticked.
Fuck.
“You called, man, who’re you?” Mike returned.
“Who I am is the owner of this phone’s man, man,” Beau shot back, definitely ticked. So ticked, he’d gone straight to belligerent.
But Mike was frozen.
“Yo! What the fuck?” Beau asked. “Is Dusty there?”
“No,” Mike forced from between his teeth.
“Where is she at six twenty in the fuckin’ morning?” he demanded to know.
Mike didn’t like his tone and he just simply didn’t like the fact he was talking to Dusty’s man, a man she told him she didn’t have, so he didn’t bother to answer.
Beau didn’t care that Mike didn’t answer.
“Right, you wanna tell me why it’s twenty after six in the fuckin’ mornin’ and you’re answerin’ my woman’s phone?” Beau kept up his interrogation.
“No,” Mike ground out.
“Fuck me,” the man clipped.
“You got a message or did you call just to swear?” Mike asked.
“Yeah, I got a message, man. Tell my woman to call me. Immediately. You got that?”
“Got it,” Mike replied shortly.
Then he got dead air.
He stared at the phone. Then he tossed it to the nightstand instead of hurling it across the room.
Since Audrey, he’d played the field and, taking care around his kids, he’d done this pretty extensively. This was partly due to the fact that Mike was a man. And it was partly due to the fact that the last seven months of his marriage their sex life was non-existent. This was because Mike found he couldn’t stomach fucking a woman who lied to him daily, handed him shit frequently and still had no problem spending his money, as well as money he hadn’t yet earned, freely. It was the last of many times when Audrey turned to him and he felt the nausea roil that he knew he was done. And it was when he set her off him that he told her that, straight out. She had then flown into a rage, screaming and swearing and he knew their kids could hear but, as always with Audrey, he had no choice. No matter how often he told her to shut the fuck up or keep her voice down, she ignored him or got louder and her language got fouler.
At the time, watching her red-faced and infuriated at learning she was bearing the consequences of her own behavior, it became crystal clear Mike’s decision to divorce her ass was the right one.
He’d spent years doing everything he could to sort their shit. At first, young, stupid and in love with her, he’d knocked himself out to get her everything she wanted. But even when he laid it at her feet, she just wanted more. Then he’d done everything he could think to do to find out what drove her to these needs so he could guide her to understanding them and she could work through them. This didn’t work either. No matter how many talks they had, or, in the end, fights, her behavior didn’t change. Often, she promised it would, swore she’d “do better” and she might, for a week, a month. But then she’d lapse right back into it. At the start, she didn’t hide her spending. In the end, she did. How the fuck she thought he wouldn’t figure it out since he paid their bills, they had a joint account and she didn’t work, he had no clue. She just didn’t.
The pressure built. For his part, it built along with his frustration at being in debt and having a wife who lied to him consistently. For Audrey’s part, even though she never admitted it, it had to do with feelings of guilt that mingled with anger at herself that she couldn’t control her addiction.
And since she couldn’t, he got free of her. And, free of her, he enjoyed himself.
Of all the women he enjoyed himself with, Dusty was the one he’d enjoyed the most. Not only in bed, and she was by far the best he’d had since Audrey, before Audrey and including Audrey, but also out of it. Funny, engaging and open, Dusty let it all hang out. She didn’t hide shit. Not her pain. Not her humor. Not her anger at her sister. Not her thoughts about the world.
And he liked that. Too much. And with her being Dusty, their history, the special bond that they had when they were younger that seemed to snap right into place and tighten exponentially nearly the instant they were back together, he let himself be reeled in. Just like Vi who had done the same, straight off the bat giving him that open sharing, having the opposite for years with Audrey, he let himself get caught up in it.
But apparently, unlike Vi, who was going through some serious shit too when he met her, Dusty’s openness was bullshit. She had a night in a hotel room with her family close but her anger at her sister wouldn’t allow her to be with them. He walked right up to her room and gave her an opportunity not to spend that time alone. So she took it and, doing it, used him.
And Jesus, he hadn’t even been with her an entire fucking day and that shit stung too.
“Fuck,” he whispered as he heard the lock click on the door.
He turned and watched her walk in. Her masses of hair was down and tumbling around her shoulders and over her chest. Her face was free of makeup and the pallor he noticed yesterday was gone, her cheeks pink from the cold. She was wearing the black turtleneck from yesterday and the black boots but she’d added the faded jeans. She wasn’t wearing the denim blazer but instead a gray suede jacket that hung long on her hips and had fringe along the arms. Any other woman, fuck, anyone, female or male, wore a suede jacket with fringe, Mike, a small town Indiana man through and through and not a cowboy by a long shot, would find that amusing.