“I did. And got right into bed.”
Mmmm. “Did you sleep well or were you distracted by dreams of a soulful singer who managed to get your digits?”
Yup, her laugh was the goal to reach for—he loved the sound of it. “Yes, that was what kept me up. How did you know?”
“Maybe he was dreaming of you, too.” He followed that up with a quick, “How’s work going? Your puppy and you having a good time of it?”
“Actually, I’ve done three pages, which is awesome.”
As a text came through to him, he winced at the beeping notification in his ear. “How long do you have until the book’s due?”
“I’ve got another week, but you don’t want to take any chances. Better to finish early than find yourself squeezed for time and rushing things. The good news is I’m on track—I have about eight more pages to go, and I got lucky today. Sometimes the flow is just right there, you know?”
“Inspired, maybe?”
“Are you trying to sell that singer again?”
“I am. He comes with a good warranty, not a lot of wear and tear.” Kind of a lie, but come on … “He’s functional, reliable … and attractive in so many settings.”
“Is this a lamp or a man we’re talking about?”
“He’s bright, too—did I mention that?” As she laughed again, he smiled. “And he’s eco-friendly.”
“How so?”
“He eats organic.”
“A lamp with a hearty appetite?”
“Oh, sorry—I mean he only accepts those curlicue bulbs.”
“Do they sell these things at Target?”
“No, someone has to give him to you.”
Even he heard the purr in his voice at the end of that one—and she obviously got the drift, because there was a quick pause.
She cleared her throat. “Sounds … pretty magical.”
He lowered his voice and dropped the riff. “Will you come to see me sing tonight? It’s just backup, but I’d love to have you in the audience as my guest.”
Before she could answer, he jumped in. “You can come backstage, hang out with somebody famous—your Facebook status would be awesome. It’s a Millicent Jayson concert—you must have heard of her?”
Say yes, he thought. Say yes…
As he waited on pins and needles, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this way. For some strange reason, all he wanted was to be inside this woman—it didn’t make sense, but that was destiny for you.
The powerful wasn’t necessarily the comprehensible.
Duke walked out of his bedroom into a haze of pot smoke. Coughing, he went over to the cabin’s front door and ripped it open, letting the cool spring air in.
“Man, you gotta put up that damn bong,” he muttered at the couch.
Naturally, his star boarder, Rolly—short for Roland—was out like a light, the guy’s roasty-toasty pea brain taking yet another THC-induced breather.
“Freeloader.” Duke kicked the back foot of the sofa on his way to the galley kitchen. “Wake up!”
“Mom?” came a muffled reply.
“No, I’m not your mom. And you’re thirty-two—that should not be the first thing coming out of your mouth in the morning anymore.”
No response. Well, not verbally, at any rate. There was a shift of position—that led to a throw pillow falling off the far end.
Maybe the cold would wake the guy up.
Or the smell of coffee.
Worse came to worst, Duke had a claw hammer in his toolbox.
At the three-foot-long counter by the stove, Duke made a pot of nonfussy coffee—i.e., no measuring to exactitude, no flavorings, just caffeine and water, add heat and a mug. He poured himself some before things had finished brewing, and he drank the first dose at the window, staring out at the farmland that surrounded the place he rented. For the second dose, he faced in, leaning his ass against the lip of the stainless-steel bucket sink.
One story. A thousand square feet. One bed, one bath, plenty of privacy, and the cost was cut in half because he did the mowing in the summer and the snowplowing in the winter for the owners who lived down the lane.
No Warren County muni services on the roads in and out of these three hundred acres. Frankly, the family was lucky to have city water and cable.
As a familiar snoring lit off from the couch, he poured himself mugful number three. Fucking Rolly. What a pain in the ass.
“You need to get a job,” he barked when he finally put his mug in the sink.
It was like having a sixteen-year-old in the house. The good news was that on a regular basis the guy somehow found some chippie to pick up the slack. The relationships never lasted longer than a couple of months, but at least they gave Duke a break.
Would miracles please never cease.
In truth, he really needed to throw the guy out. But Rolly had him over a barreclass="underline" Old friends, like bad habits, died hard—so there was nothing he could do. Well, nothing except pray that soon, very soon, on one of the bastard’s pot buys, or a bar crawl, or for shit’s sake a trip to a Frito-Lay aisle in the local Qwikie Mart, some new version of tits-’n’-ass looked at that handsome baby face and fwelll in wuuuuuuuuvvvve.
As nauseating as that was.
Matter of fact, rumor had it there was a female on the horizon at this very moment—would that she would get her ass in gear. He was so ready to reduce the secondhand emissions in his house and get his sofa back.
Ten minutes later, he was going out the open doorway. The temperature of the “living room,” such as it was, had dropped fifteen degrees and was still falling—and Rolly hadn’t even noticed. Kinda. The guy had pulled the back cushions over his body and was doing a fetal.
Duke was of half a mind to just leave shit open, but he didn’t relish the idea of coming home to a pothead Popsicle who had to be nursed out of pneumonia.
No locking things up behind him. He didn’t have anything to steal, and he wasn’t giving Rolly a key in the event that someday he booted the guy for good.
This week he was only working twelve to five for the county, because it was a little early for the real spring cleanup and a little late for any snow removal. Soon enough, though, the backbreaking would start, and he was ready for it—the Caldwell city parks needed upkeep, and he was exactly the kind of thug to get into the brambles for ripping and tearing.
So much more satisfying than babysitting the wait line at the Iron Mask.
Getting into his truck, he started the engine, hit the gas and took the back roads to what the crews called “the Shed.” The facility was located on twenty-five acres waaaaaay outside of town—so his commute, even to an eight-hour shift that started in the morning, was just him and his truck and the farmland roads. Period. The only time he stopped was for deer crossings.
As he drove along, his eyes didn’t stray from the pavement ahead. There was no looking around and measuring the weather, or the progress of spring, or diddling with some radio station or another.
There was, however, something on his mind.
That woman from the night before.
He’d still been thinking about her as the sun had come up. Hard to explain why she’d stuck with him—yeah, sure, she was good-looking, but on a regular basis he saw that—hell, he saw a lot more, given the undress code at the club. But something about her was different … important, even.
Man, he didn’t like the whole thing. Not the fact that she was like a ghost who wouldn’t stop haunting him, or his ridiculous, overblown reaction to her—but especially the reason she’d been to that café, the man who she’d gone to see.
Fucking G.B. That bastard—
As his phone went off, he dug it out of his jacket and didn’t bother checking to see who it was. “Yeah.”