“No. No, it’s okay.” Sarah pulled her inside, where a delicious scent engulfed her.
Brownies? Kenna would pay big bucks for brownies.
If she had big bucks.
“As Tess said, this is a teen center for kids who need the escape, but I’d never turn anyone away.”
Sarah smiled. “Especially a lone woman at night in an area like this one.”
Kenna would have laughed, but it might have been a half-hysterical one, so she bit it back. “Honestly. I can pay.”
“Okay.” Amicably, Sarah led her through a living room that was small and short on furniture, but long on coziness. The walls were a faded yellow, or maybe that was just age. The couch, a well-worn red, had definitely seen its heyday, but looked comfortable enough. There were a bunch of folding chairs and a stack of magazines, as well as a television set with a dial. The seventies revisited all around.
There were several teenagers lounging around talking or watching a show, each of whom glanced over with a disinterested expression.
Sarah took Kenna to the kitchen, which didn’t look any more modern than the living room had. Here the walls were green and the cabinets didn’t have fronts. The lovely seventies again. But the brownies on a plate on the scarred Formica table looked new and mouth-watering. Sarah pointed to them. “Would you like one?”
Only more than her next breath, but she didn’t want to be any more indebted. “No,” she said regretfully. “I need to get going.”
Sarah nodded, seeming both serene and sad. “You don’t have to, Kenna. No one has to. As Tess said, I could give you the address of a wonderful women’s shelter.”
“Thank you. You’re very kind, but I think you’ve misunderstood-”
“Just remember we’re here.” Sarah led her through the back door to the garage for the gas, then walked out front with her. “And I’m always available if you need an ear, or help out of something too big to handle on your own.”
“Honestly, I’m not a prostitute. I’m not even on my own, not really. I-” She stopped short at the look on Sarah’s face and followed the woman’s gaze to her car.
The back of the faded silver Civic was overloaded with the mess she’d made when she’d decided to stay at the hotel. As usual when an idea grabbed her, she’d just acted on it. Without organizing, she’d collected her things, shoving all of it into the back seat. Dresses, shoes, makeup bag, blow dyer, more clothes, more shoes, a stuffed teddy bear from her childhood, you name it, it was back there, overflowing from her suitcases, making it look as though she lived out of the back seat of her car. “This isn’t what it looks like. I just-”
“Oh Kenna, you don’t ever have to pretend here.” Slipping a hand around her waist, Sarah hugged her. “We’ve all been down on our luck at some point, so just forget about the gas money, okay?”
“No, really. I can pay.” Thrilled to be able to do this at least, Kenna reached in for her purse, which unfortunately, was also a big mess, but when she opened her wallet she remembered she hadn’t stopped at the bank. Not that there was much in her account at the moment, but-
Sarah put her hand over Kenna’s on the wallet. “It’s on me.”
Kenna looked into the woman’s extraordinarily caring eyes and felt a lump clog her throat. “I’ll be back,” she said rashly. “With money, I promise.”
“You don’t need money here.”
“I want to repay you.”
Sarah smiled, a warm, giving, generous one that made Kenna wonder when the last time she herself had given that sort of smile to someone. Well, there’d been that cute guy at TGIF’s last week, but other than that…she couldn’t remember.
“You could come back and volunteer sometime,” Sarah said. “We always need help.”
“Okay, sure…” Working at a senior’s center was one thing. Volunteering with sullen teens? She’d rather have root-canal surgery. She got into her car, waved when Sarah did, and drove off.
But she couldn’t get the place, or Sarah, out of her head. The woman gave kindly to strangers, without strings. So utterly different than the world Kenna was driving to, and unexpectedly, the joy she’d found earlier in the records room of the hotel faded a little.
Sarah’s world, riddled with poverty and injustice, suddenly seemed much more like the place for her, a place where she could make a difference, have an impact, put her ideas into action…
But six months was six months, and she’d promised her father.
She just really wished she’d at least taken the offered brownie.
5
WES PLAYED three-on-three basketball every Monday night. They played hard and won hard, and when tonight’s game was over, his team was only two victories away from becoming the rec-center league champions.
And two aspirins away from pain relief. He walked to the parking lot with his teammates, each of them trying not to whimper at their various aches and pains. Victors didn’t whimper. Men on top of their world didn’t whimper.
But, oh God, he wanted to.
“Heading to the pub, Wes?” his buddy, Nick, asked him.
The pub was where they ended up more often than not after a game. There, they either celebrated or commiserated, depending on how the game had gone.
Tonight, there’d be a lot of celebrating, and for a moment, he was tempted. But duty called so he shook his head. “I have to head back to the office.”
This was accompanied by boos and hisses, but as his teammates Nick and Steve were a doctor and an attorney respectively, who both put in even more hours than he did, he laughed them off.
He drove to the hotel and parked in his designated spot, noting the one next to him had a freshly painted sign that read Ms. Kenna Mallory. At least it was vacant.
The corporate floors were deserted. He’d given everyone the night off, including himself, but now that the hard play was over and some of his aggressions had been released, he wanted to get some work done. Especially since he’d spent most of the day soothing hurt egos and ruffled feathers. People resented the intrusion of Kenna Mallory at such a high level.
Serena had been the most upset, a situation that gave him mixed feelings. She was a junior conference manager, and reported directly to him, and though she was decent at her job, he’d always felt she had more ambition than actual skill. Given the way she’d gone on and on today, she’d forgotten that she, too, had once been given her job because of her last name. No entry-level positions for Mallory family members.
Either way, he hoped she’d gotten all her whining and pouting out of her system, because when Serena was on a rant, everyone around her paid.
He sank to his desk and dug in. He loved his work, but he loved his time off as well, and wanted to make sure he got some this weekend, since he actually had a date and was looking forward to a few hours of mindless fun. He looked forward to everything he did these days, because though it had been years since he’d struggled to make something of himself, he’d never forgotten his humble beginnings.
With his current salary several times over what he needed, he was able to do pretty much whatever he wanted. Since he wasn’t a frivolous man or one who needed luxuries, this mostly involved extreme sports or spoiling his family when they let him-buying his parents a house, sending them on vacations they’d never dreamed they’d be able to take, getting his brother through college-
A blur of creamy skin, blond hair and an unforgettable fuchsia skirt passed his opened office door. He glanced at his watch. Ten o’clock.
What the hell?
Standing, he rounded his desk to peek out, but yep, it was indeed Kenna Mallory’s very fine back side wriggling its way down the hallway, her bare feet in those strappy little sandals that seemed suicidal to him.